Hello my little fruity popsters,

What a blooming lovely busy week here at the club and academy! You can't imagine how much fun I have had this week, it's been an absolute blast!



This week saw the Gurkha Welfare played in beautiful sunshine and some quite serious humidity! It was a joy to see so many people get involved and play our most exquisite course. Congratulations to Bruce Jackman for organising a great day. 

There was such a lot of activity this week, I don't really know where to start!

Rose Hargreaves held her Lady Captain's Day last Tuesday and it was bright sunshine all the way. The theme was Fascinators on the Fairway, and the Ladies excelled themselves with some absolutely beautiful headwear. They certainly turned heads on Tuesday. 

   

Rose also gave me the lovely news that the Ladies Vice Captain Elect is to be Sarah Cheetham. Congratulations Sarah, I'm so very pleased for you. 

There is also a further report from Rose here:

"Excellent result regarding the Ladies South West County Championship- our Gloucestershire Ladies, including Alex Saunders and Becky Gibbs, have won the tournament! They will now represent the SW in the National finals to be held in September. 

This is a fantastic achievement for a mostly very young team playing 5 days of morning and afternoon golf, requiring great stamina and excellent golf. 

Sandra Gibbs and Paula Crabtree have progressed to the second round of the County Foursomes and will play Thornbury at B+C on Sunday July 5th. 

Good luck to:- 

Karen Price who will be playing in the County Coronation Medal at Chipping Sodbury on July 2nd. Paula Crabtree and Karen Rix playing in the Seniors County Championship at Knowle on 12th July. 

Paula Crabtree and Su Worthington playing in the Fraser Foursomes at Stinchcombe on 16th July. Indeed, a busy month for our Ladies representing B&C in various County competitions. 

Rose" 

Thanks Rose, great news! 

Now over to Paul for a quick reminder. 



Don't forget in September we are hosting a Pro Am event. We haven't held a Pro Am for many a year and this year's event is not to be missed! It's an opportunity to play alongside a professional golfer from the PGA West Region and we are looking for teams of three amateurs to enter the event which is on Monday 14th September. The entry includes a professional, food and some wonderful prizes, so sign up with the office as soon as you can.

Paul"



Oh my......what an absolutely wonderful academy experience this week has brought us. We start with the Tri Golf Festival last Wednesday!

120 children from ten schools across Bristol and the South West came together to compete in their level two school games event. To us it's just simply called the Tri Golf Festival, and it's an event which we LOVE doing. 

We spent two hours setting up the night before, and two hours checking and finalising in the morning, as there is a definite structure to the eight games the children have to compete in. They had already competed in their level one school games event, the winners of that coming to compete in our festival. 

They all had a great time, although it was very, very hot and sticky, and the winners of the festival were St Bernadette's School. Congratulations to them, they now go on to compete in the final held at the University of Bath next month. 

  

  

Photos courtesy of Bob Bennett Photography

We always manage to do a relatively good job with the festival because we are passionate about helping juniors. We have been asked to do not one, oh no one is for wimps, but two....YES TWO festivals next year. We will be running a year one event for the really weeny ones, aged 5-6, and a year six event for those almost ready for senior school. I can't wait.....well maybe just for a while. I have to be honest, I was so shattered after the clean-up operation that I slept from 8.30pm til 6am the next day. And there wasn't a bottle of prosecco in sight! But it's what I love doing and what I want to do, so tiredness can just leave me alone!

So after we finished the main Tri Golf festival, we held our first mini inclusion festival for the pupils of Belgrave Special School. No sooner had all the little wee lovelies from the main festival left at 12.45, we started the inclusion event. There were seven games set up, with one orange squash stop. The main thing for both festivals was to encourage huge amounts of fun, laughter and enjoyment. Scores don't matter to me, kids having fun does. 

We made the games as fun and bright as possible, with a big Velcro target and spotty Velcro balls, a bean bag fruit target throwing challenge, a big hula hoop chipping challenge, a tennis ball target challenge (thanks to John Baker for donating the tennis balls, they made a great target!) and much more. The winner of the Belgrave "Olympic" Games was the lovely James. The kids at this school are just simply awesome to work with, and I had brilliant time coaching them through the last two games of the day. They all received medals, certificates and prizes thanks to the generosity of Ronnie Allen. I don't usually get involved in the delivery of coaching, but this time I wanted to get out and coach the children my son is growing up with. I'm proud to help whenever I can.

   

   

The other great thing about Wednesday is that the festival and the Belgrave festival were being filmed by England Golf. The idea was to show B&C as a centre of golfing excellence, for our members, juniors, inclusive work and for being all round good eggs. Because we are! John Felix filming came to video us. My own interview was terrible...I am shockingly bad at interviews as I go blank, which is amazing for someone like me who struggles to shut up! However everyone else did a great job and I can't wait to see the finished product, which will also be shown on England Golf's website and their YouTube channel. I will also post a link on our website and from our newsletter, so keep watching to see me make a fool of myself (again).

Talking of making a fool of myself.....The Bath of Beans Challenge took place last Friday. If you remember, I agreed to sit in baked beans for six hours to raise money for two charities - The Daisy Garland for children with life limiting epilepsy, a charity very close to my heart due to Cam's refractory epilepsy, and the Children's Chronic Arthritis Association, a immensely worthy charity which supports children with painful and chronic swelling in their joints. I can't think of two more deserving charities and I wanted to do whatever I can to raise funds for them. 

Two years ago we did a slimathon for the Daisy Garland, which raised over £1600 and this beans challenge, I am by proud to announce, has raised £1500 altogether; over £1300 for Daisy Garland and £200 for the children's chronic arthritis association. Woooooooooooooo Hoooooooooooo. Beans on toast anyone?......!

      

Photos courtesy of Emma Waters

So whatever will she come with next? No jumping out of planes I can assure you, but next year it may well be a throw a wet sponge at the Pro Shop event. I am sure the boys would be delighted to help.......... Oh. So maybe it'll be just me again then!

I would like to take a minute to thank you all for sponsoring me, donating or helping me. I can't do the completely mad things I do without your support, and I know you wonderful people have got my back. You're all awesome. Thank you so so much.

I have rabbited on enough so I shall let you all go back to having a nice day!

Hasta la vista baybees! 

Caren, Paul, Andy and Luke