It takes quite a long time to get down to Budleigh Salterton, travelling from Waterloo to Exeter, changing and taking a smaller train to Exmouth. This is the third tournament I’ve played at Budleigh and Jackie and Peter Hardcastle are delightfully kind hosts at their beautiful home.

On this occasion their daughter, Sara and husband Steve, were staying, just about to leave and return to New Zealand, so Jackie was understandably a little sad.

We managed to spend an hour at the club on Monday practising, the tournament not starting until Tuesday morning. One of the people I’d met on previously, Alison, arrived and asked me if I’d like to go to her Rotary breakfast the next morning. Jackie had already mentioned that they were having a leaving dinner for Sara and Steve in the evening, so it was going to be a full-on day! And it was also going to be the first day of a week of three 3-hour games a day and I hadn’t done that for almost exactly two years, so I wasn’t sure how my stamina would hold up!

But Alison duly collected me at 6.45 on Tuesday morning and took me to Exeter Southernhay Rotary for a very enjoyable meeting. She duly dropped me back at the croquet club at 9.10 in time to have a quick knock up before the first doubles match – playing with Jackie. 

We’d decided to enter the handicap doubles together, having no idea how we’d get on, but, in fact, we had a very good time and did surprisingly well, winning three out of four of our games, some of which were against very experienced competitors.

That evening we had a lovely dinner to farewell Sara and Steve, tinged, of course, with sadness.

And so the week progressed very pleasurably. The tournament is always fun, well run and friendly and the weather took a change for the better for the first time since I’d arrived in May. It even strung about five days together instead of the odd day of sunshine between days of rain.

Even the stamina held out and by the fifth day it felt normal to be playing for nine hours a day! I’d been placed in the third division with seven others of about the same ranking – five men and three women. So it was pleasant at the end of the week to find that I’d won the division and could take away the silverware this year. The runner up was one of my favourite competitors and it was great that she came second.

Finals Day was bathed in beautiful sunshine and it was a pleasure to have our photo taken with the English Channel in the background.

On Monday morning it was time to return to London and prepare for the Big Event of the year, Adam and Janice’s European reception following their wedding in New Zealand In April.

I came home to an empty house as Kate and family had left for Sorrento the previous Friday to enjoy ten days in Italy including the celebrations in Como. They had a wonderful time in Sorrento and visited Pompeii so made very good use of their time.

So I was able to get down to a huge pile of washing and lots of emails to deal with as, for some reason, I’d been unable to connect to Peter’s WiFi in Budleigh. One of the emails was a lovely surprise. I’d been accepted into the inaugural World Women’s Association Croquet tournament which will be played in Melbourne in October. What an honour. What a huge thing to get my head around in just a few short months. There will be 48 entrants, almost all of whom have seriously lower handicaps than I have. Hmmm …