Petanque in days gone by

To celebrate the end of another successful pétanque year, here's a slideshow of over 50 boules and pétanque scenes from a wide variety of towns in France over the past century.

Very interesting to see the change in dress and, in the later ones, some of France's most classic cars.

The song is by Henry Roman, aka Ricoune, one of Provence's most popular apéro concert singers. Enjoy!

Pétanque in days gone by - 3:30 min

Happy New Year to all our friends!

PS: the substantial backlog of pictures and reports received for the blog will be uploaded shortly.

Petanque in El Paso, TX

EPPC - El Paso Petanque Club now has its own website.

John & Linda Kemp have been keen promoters of the game after several trips to France. And whenever they go, they bring their own boules from Texas!

They play most Saturday & Sunday mornings on Rim Road near upper Tom Lea Park. Join them next weekend!

El Paso Petanque Club

Senegal report

Here's a little video clip from France24 News about the World Championships in Dakar, Senegal in November.



World's top boules players gather in Africa

Christmas scene

Valerie Freschet in Aix-en-Provence, who is obviously a big fan of both pétanque and "santons" - literally "little saints", hand made figurines - created this unique nativity scene on a boulodrome. Look at all the details!

Happy Holidays

To all our friends around the world, our very best wishes!

(click on the tree and turn up your speakers)

Blogging here has been kind of slow, very slow, nonexisting recently due to a lot of traveling and getting ready for the Christmas season, but it's good to see others have taken up the slack!
Petanque Marinière for example is very much "on the ball" with US and international news, thanks to tireless Ken who deserves kudos for scouring the net every day.

PS: Many thanks to all the people who mailed or called to check if I'm all right. It's just been extremely busy. We've been working hard on improving logistics from France, and preparing for some important surprises for 2009. About which more later!