February 16, 2006

Winter pétanque

With more & more clubs up north (WA, OR, MI, IL, and now MN), it may be time to start looking at our Scandinavian friends for inspiration.
Here's an example of the Helsinki Petanque Club in Finland. It looks like they took over an old factory building and fixed it up for winter play. Here's their website (PDF).

My Finnish is non-existent, but I can make up that they have 12 courts and a total area of 7,700 sqft. I am sure that in the states above one must be able to find an abandoned or at least cheap building. Or am I dreaming..?
Can some of our friends from Finland (Jukka?) , Norway (Stig?), Sweden or Denmark give us some input on how they went about it?
It is obvious that our Michigan friends are suffering severely from petanque withdrawal symptoms. To the point where they're playing marbles and have even appointed a dog as VP..!! We can't have them go through another winter like that.
Thanks in advance for any input from the European northern front.

1 comment:

Baby Nubbins said...

Speaking for Michigan, Joe and I are surrounded by lots and lots of empty factories. Unfortunately, the United States is so litigious that the Liability Risk is VERY high, plus, to purchase insurance to use an abandoned building is VERY expensive. So, unless we have someone donate a facility, we're stuck.

We do have something in the works for next winter (Shhh it's a secret) - but last winter's use of a Greenhouse was the IDEAL solution.

By the way, check out these guy's website, they have a live WEBCAM for their petanque courts. VERY cool.

http://www.helsinkipetanque.fi/