By David Jacobs
After several summer visits to France, my wife (who received the nickname "Le Destroyer" from a 90-year-old Pétanque veteran in one of the towns) and I decided to build a court at our home in Los Angeles.
Fortunately, we had a terraced plane on our hillside property. Years ago we had cleared the site for a paddle tennis court but had had to abandon the project because of complications. At 18 by 50 feet it was within the tolerable dimensions of a boules court, was already level, and had good drainage. So we cleared it, pulled up the grass, and enclosed the surface.
The north and east boundaries were defined by vine-covered walls. The problem was that the south and west extremes fell off dramatically, so we couldn't simply use wooden planks: any ball that hopped the boundary would fall almost straight down into rough chaparral. To create an enclosure we used whatever was around: some leftover lattice and the extra slate we had kept from the decks on higher levels. This wasn't just for economy; it also maintained visual consistency on the property.
As the latticed wall took shape, however, we began to feel that the court was becoming too room-like, so we stopped and used garden-wire for the rest of the side. At present the change from lattice to wire looks stark, but we are planting vine and a little bougenvilla here and there and hope that a year's growth will soften the angles.
Once the surface was cleared and enclosed, we put down about three inches of crushed gravel and topped it with three inches of stone dust. When I went to order this material, I took along printouts of the information I found on this and other Pétanque sites, which was helpful but not definitive. The crushed gravel was no problem, but the merchant (who was not familiar with boules) and I had a lot of discussion about the composition of the stone dust. Finally we settled on a material the merchant had recently used to surface a high school track oval. We compacted the stone dust with a roller rented from Home Depot.
At first the surface was hard and much too fast, but after a couple of rainy days and some practice games the top seems to be breaking up a little and becoming more gravelly. In any case we'll play on it for a couple of months and see how it evolves.
So far the cost has been about $2500 -- half for the two kinds of gravel, and half for labor. I tell myself this figure is extremely reasonable - just imagine how much more it would have cost to build the paddle tennis court. We're using the same logic to justify spending a couple of hundred dollars more on a few sets of competition-level boules. The economics may be questionable, but what a difference the good boules make in play!
petanque.org is actually one of the oldest user-driven websites on the internet today. When we started up in 1997 there was no plan, it all started with a group of web-designers and programmers that enjoyed drinking beer at the local pub. However we realized that drinking beer was not a good excuse to leave home at any given time, we needed a better plan. Or just simply a plan.
Every time you look at a webpage, the address of the page is remembered. Forever. And out most visited page in the last couple of months has not been about pastis, petanque, france or anything like that. Apparently you are all very interested in French fashion! And small furry animals..
As an outstanding popular game, the game of boules had his hour of glory at the beginning of the 20th century, at the same time as the photographic postcard. Through these amazing and particularly live snapshots, Yves Moreau proposes to depict the history of the game of boules.
Most Petanque players think that the game is all about how they throw their boule. After all, whoever lands their boule closest to the cochon is the person who’s going to pick up the most points. However, Petanque isn’t all about merely throwing boules since there is also a psychological aspect to the game.
What to do when you pass 83 years? Build a petanque court.Building a petanque court in DubaiBuilding a petanque court in MontrealAn Anderson, California Court being builtBuilding a welsh pisteHollywood PétanqueA southern california boules courtCampaign for Real Pétanque Terrains!The story of a manually built courtNo piste/terrain plays the same
how to have an intersant set ? (3 )search (1 )Terrain for SANDY soils (Florida) (53 )Rules "Gardening" (4 )International championship of Czech Republic in pétanque 2010 (1 )Rules "Gardening" (1 )Terrain construction on asphalt (4 )buy book win to win (1 )Holding all boules (3 )Coaching from the side (2 )basic question on throwing palm-up (2 )Petanque in Central London - UK (6 )Rule when the Boules was stopped (5 )New book on how to win at Petanque (18 )Petanque in Lille France (3 )
