Petanque on grass?

I have never been an advocate of playing petanque on grass, and it ticks me off when vendors advertise it as such - as on this picture. Tall grass to boot. You can't see the target ball, and the boules bounce around like on a mattress. It's misleading for new players.

But... there's grass and grass. This weekend the French Alliance here in Greensboro held a picnic and we ended up playing for a couple of hours on a patch of hard, grassy soil in City Lake Park in Jamestown.
It worked well and several people new to the game thoroughly enjoyed it.
Bottom line: if it looks bad as a lawn, it's good for pétanque!
Well, putting greens would work too, but you'll probably be banned for life from the golf club if you tried.

Petanque on grass?

I have never been an advocate of playing petanque on grass, and it ticks me off when vendors advertise it as such - as on this picture. Tall grass to boot. You can't see the target ball, and the boules bounce around like on a mattress. It's misleading for new players.

But... there's grass and grass. This weekend the French Alliance here in Greensboro held a picnic and we ended up playing for a couple of hours on a patch of hard, grassy soil in City Lake Park in Jamestown.
It worked well and several people new to the game thoroughly enjoyed it.
Bottom line: if it looks bad as a lawn, it's good for pétanque!
Well, putting greens would work too, but you'll probably be banned for life from the golf club if you tried.

Petanque in Toronto

Some people definitely have their priorities straight!
David recently moved from Guernsey to Canada and the first thing he did was to build a terrain in his backyard.

Here are 4 pictures I took during construction of my petanque terrain. It is about 12 x 2.7 metres (I would liked to have gone wider but lackthe space). I used a mechanical tamper to compress the lower layer of limestone tailings, (about 5 inches depth on top of a plastic weed control membrane). Then I tamped another two inches of fine limestone dust, and added a light loose dusting on top.

I will have to dig the end gutters out a bit so that they contain long out-of-bounds boule - an idea I incorporated after seeing an Italian Hotel bocci terrain with similar end gutters.

I used 6 x 6 pressure treated lumber to contain the whole thing. There are 3 layers on the low side of the grade (towards the ravine and the apple trees) and the low side also has pieces of 6 x 6 extending under the terrain to form a crib so hopefully the whole thing will stay in place for many years to come.

The uprights are for floodlighting (all properly cased in conduit and all external "wet environment" wire, junction boxes etc), and the tops of the floodlight posts (about 4'9") are just perfect for your beer!

This is the third terrain I have built over the years but I find that the longer I play, the more I need to learn and practice!

I look forward to Christening the new terrain just as soon as your boules arrive. My other boules will remain in Europe so there is room in my suitcase for normal peoples stuff!

David also volunteers to advise anyone in Canada who wants to build a terrain or start a group.
Let us know, and we'll give you his phone #.

Petanque in Toronto

Some people definitely have their priorities straight!
David recently moved from Guernsey to Canada and the first thing he did was to build a terrain in his backyard.

Here are 4 pictures I took during construction of my petanque terrain. It is about 12 x 2.7 metres (I would liked to have gone wider but lackthe space). I used a mechanical tamper to compress the lower layer of limestone tailings, (about 5 inches depth on top of a plastic weed control membrane). Then I tamped another two inches of fine limestone dust, and added a light loose dusting on top.

I will have to dig the end gutters out a bit so that they contain long out-of-bounds boule - an idea I incorporated after seeing an Italian Hotel bocci terrain with similar end gutters.

I used 6 x 6 pressure treated lumber to contain the whole thing. There are 3 layers on the low side of the grade (towards the ravine and the apple trees) and the low side also has pieces of 6 x 6 extending under the terrain to form a crib so hopefully the whole thing will stay in place for many years to come.

The uprights are for floodlighting (all properly cased in conduit and all external "wet environment" wire, junction boxes etc), and the tops of the floodlight posts (about 4'9") are just perfect for your beer!

This is the third terrain I have built over the years but I find that the longer I play, the more I need to learn and practice!

I look forward to Christening the new terrain just as soon as your boules arrive. My other boules will remain in Europe so there is room in my suitcase for normal peoples stuff!

David also volunteers to advise anyone in Canada who wants to build a terrain or start a group.
Let us know, and we'll give you his phone #.