A Curling Bonspiel

We have entered a Curling Bonspiel this weekend, I had to ask what a bonspiel is; basically it's a curling tournament.  We played our first game last night at 8 o'clock so we headed up to the curling arena a little early so we could check it out, see how to play and pick up a few rules.  The bonspiel organiser was a man of few words, when I asked him how to play he told me to 'take a seat near the glass and watch'.  I have never even seen curling on the Winter Olympics although I had heard about the sweeping, so watching through the glass did not help too much.

We wore warm clothes and our runners to walk on the ice.  We chose not to wear the sliders on our shoes as this would make the ice too slippery, the slider is worn on one foot so you can slide quickly along the ice and also to slide out to throw your rock.  The best way I can explain the game is to compare it to lawn bowls.  We had two teams of four and each of us got to throw two rocks down the ice, aiming for the large target at the other end.  A skipper from your team stands on the target and tells you where to aim and you curl your rock to land where they point to (sometimes!).  The rock slides along the ice and the two other team members slide along with it, sweeping with the broom (when the skipper or the person who threw the rock calls 'sweep'), the sweeping melts the ice a little and keeps the rock moving further along towards the target.  The strategy is similar to lawn bowls, you can knock other rocks out to get your teams rocks closest to the target and also to guard the target to stop your opposition from getting close to the target.

All up we played three games and won two, we had a steak supper (t-bone, baked potato, coleslaw, bread roll- very popular here!) and took home a blender and LED Christmas lights for prizes!

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The Curling ice rink

Throwing my rock