My 150th!

I know I’ve not written on here about tenpin bowling for a while (throwback to this this very nerdy post from December 2019 when I last blogged about it), but, I am very much still bowling. Just a little recap for any new readers to this blog who might be thinking ‘what is she on about now?!’ OK, so I basically go round ‘ticking’ off bowling alleys: you know like train spotting, where if you see a certain train you write down it’s number etc etc, I pretty much do that with bowling alleys. But I do have to have played at least one game in it, to make it ‘count’ (three games is my preferred amount). Then I write it all down on my spreadsheet. I’ve been doing this since 2016. So, if I haven’t weirded you out too much, then grab your anoraks and read on…

When writing that aforementioned post, I used to be hitting around about 40 ‘new’ bowling alleys each year, but Covid slowed that number extremely significantly. As did several health problems I experienced over the last few years.

I went to only one (yes one) bowling alley in 2021 and a slight improvement in 2022 of eight. Towards the end of 2022, I felt bowling was something I could try and incorporate more regularly again and try to reach the heights of pre-pandemic where we were bowling almost once every week. 2023 has proven that to an extent, though before moving to Sheffield half way through the year, our options of ‘new’ bowling alleys were few and far between due to having ticked off all in the North West and beyond. Moving more easterly, meant there was a fresh influx of lanes to go at, with 3 in Sheffield itself (all of which we bowled at in the first month or so). At time of writing, I’m currently at 18 this year- getting to 20 would be nice and 25 would be even nicer-er! Let’s see…

But also of note and what I really wanted to say in this post, was that I reached my landmark 150th! The bowling alley was Pavilion Bowl, Clacton-on-Sea. It was a 12 lane independent establishment, with ‘real’ pins (as opposed to the rapidly growing pins on strings phenomenon). The lanes were in excellent condition and get this- there was even a free jukebox! Shame we only realised towards the end though, but still had time for three songs: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’- Billy Joel, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’- Bob Dylan and ‘Eyes Closed’- Ed Sheeran. Well at least we enjoyed ourselves! It was actually a really good choice for this landmark number and would highly recommend heading to this bowling alley- and that’s not just because of the jukebox!

Hopefully I won’t leave it so long before writing about bowling on here again...