IC XVII 2015

It's now early Monday evening as I post this. We've had 2 days of dull, cloudy weather with occasional light showers, but the evenings have seen huge thunder and lightning storms which looked like they might close the courses, but so far so good.

Day one - Saturday - was good fun. All bar Ken made it here in time to enjoy the afternoon's football and rugby at the local sports bar, then dinner in the evening was at Regine's - a place we'd visited many years ago when we were entertained by an opera singer. Syd still has the CD. This time it was a Motown Magic revue and Syd was again in great form as already demonstrated in e-mails. Harry left before eating anything as he suddenly felt ill, so we were down to just 7 for dinner.

Ken arrived late Saturday night and, on Sunday morning, we headed for Calanova - a new course to us. So new, in fact, that the clubhouse was of a very temporary nature, although they are building a big new one:

It wouldn't be a Squash Vets outing without at least one team photo:

The course layout was interesting but the greens were hairy and not nice to putt on. We were told that they don't cut the greens on Sunday, but the problem seemed worse than this to us. Another notable feature was the damage to fairways and surrounds everywhere - apparently caused by wild boars!:

With the exception of Jas, scoring was not good - a typical first day in fact. Syd presented Jas with his prize ball later that evening in the Horseshoe Inn:

Dinner that evening was at the local Trattoria. It was OK, but the mood was a little subdued. Syd was not partaking of alcohol after the previous evening's revelries, and Harry was understandably still a little cautious. The heavy storms outside didn't help either.

Today (Monday), it was back to Cabopino - another course with huge changes in elevation, but with much better greens than yesterday. Some of the buggy paths were so steep and slippy that they were a health hazard. We got a couple of showers, but nothing much really, so again we had dodged the forecast bullet.

Scoring was just as poor as yesterday - witness the fact that I won with a miserly score of 26 points. Here's Harry presenting me with the winner's ball back in our hotel:

Jas is the early leader with 57 points and I am 6 points behind, with Harry a further point adrift. The week long three way match between the Low, Middle and High handicappers is currently all square - although there are still some scores subject to audit that may change this.

Who knows what the rest of the week will bring, but the weather forecast is not encouraging. Los Arqueros tomorrow.