PENARTH Bowling Club’s 2016 outdoor season got off to a splendid start on Saturday when close to 100 members attended for the Official Opening Day at the club.

Despite dire warnings from the weather forecasters, the proceedings were carried out in bright sunshine throughout, though winter "woollies" were the order of the day to combat the keen and rather icy wind.

Following the traditional opening woods from captains' Mike Conway and Sue Croll, a full afternoon of “Spoons” was held and 18 ends completed with some very good bowling, considering the earliness of this year’s opening day.

As usual, the first few ends saw most bowlers going through the normal process of adapting to the extra physical demands of the outdoor conditions after the comparative comfort of the indoor season, and, unsurprisingly perhaps, there were a lot of short and stray woods scattered around the green in the early stages as the realisation dawned on everyone that you have to “send” your woods on the grass surface or they will never arrive at their intended destination.

The usual mutterings of such observations as “I put everything behind that one and, look, its only half way there,” and “These woods bend all right in Sully,” or “There’s still that funny run on the back hand…I knew I should have brought my Henselite's today.” were only to be expected and all added to a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable afternoon.

No one was expecting wonders at this early stage and some skips were even openly applauding any wood that came within two yards of the jack and exclaiming “Oh. Well bowled.”

The spoons was very closely fought out at the end of the day and the eventual winners were the foursome skipped by the irrepressible Dave Clements with a lot of help from Phil Davies, John Peterson and Joan Lewis.

The day was rounded off with members partaking of a sumptuous buffet prepared with the usual expertise of the ladies, and president Nick Chandler, thanked all those present for their continuing support and expressed his optimism regarding the success of the coming season.

This coming week, commencing on Tuesday 12, the first men's match will be a friendly against Barry Romilly, whilst on Wednesday, a mixed team will travel to play their very good friends at Cowbridge BC.

The ladies make the short trip to Penarth Windsor on Thursday for their first friendly and Saturday sees the visit of Pontycymmer BC for another men's match.