51 Curling
Fentons Curling Rink, Tunbridge Wells
Enjoyment - 95%
Success - 75%
Will try again - Yes
First timer’s recommendation – the rink is the only permanent one in England so is your best starting point. Experience with ice skating and/or bowls would help but not essential.
The penultimate sport of the year in the lead-up to Christmas had to be a winter one, and apart from skiing and ice skating which I’d already tried, the only other option in the UK is curling; a sport we punch above our weight at on the International scene. Fentons curling rink is just outside Tunbridge Wells and the three lanes sit inside a covered building beside a farm, and it is as good a use of an agricultural outbuilding as I’ve come across. It’s not cheap to hire a lane for two hours, but eight people can play and you get the shoes and a bit of coaching at the start, so it’s not bad value, and certainly more enjoyable and technical than a game of tenpin bowling.
After watching a brief video, we went out on to the ice in special shoes with grips on the bottom, we took a broom each and started playing. The game consists of 12 ends of eight stones each, with teams of four aiming to get their stones as close to the target as possible. Only one team scores at each end, so you can score between 0-8 each time. Our team of oldies (me, my brother Frank, my dad and his school mate Paul) won 6-0 after the six ends we got through, and Paul especially mastered it and scored four of the points. Overall, really recommend it if you live in the south east, or in Scotland where they also have an indoor rink.