Day 183 - Safety in Numbers

A very early start today: I had committed to collect Berin at 07:15 so that we could share the journey together from Cobham to Stoke Poges where we are playing in a match for the Vets team today. Our destination is Stoke Park and the traffic can be difficult of a morning...but not so today. We sailed though arriving in plenty of time for the 08:30 meet up slot.

I was chatting to one of our opponents, Owen, over coffee and he warned me that his partner, Gary, was "playing very well at the moment".  I should have listened more attentively to the warning: after 6 holes, we were 4 holes down after our opponents had not dropped a single shot nor made a solitary mistake.  This continued until hole 8 when Mike stiffed a 150 yard bunker shot to 6 inches for a fine birdie...only for both of opponents to pitch to within 3-4 feet and then, of course, match our team's fine effort. It was that kind of a day.

The end was as good as nigh on the 12th hole: Mike went right into a bush and I found my ball nestling up to an ancient oak: game over... In truth, neither of us played as well as we could and the pair from Stoke Park both played well below their handicaps, and all credit to them.  On returning to the Clubhouse, it transpired that we were not the only Burhill pair to have been soundly beaten.  The end score was 1-5... a right royal thumping!

An as-ever excellent Stoke Park lunch followed, and it wasn't until 4:30 pm that we got away. A quick look at the SatNav in the car gave us the bad news: the pouring rain was maybe the cause for it, but the entire road network between Slough and Cobham was showing up as red.  We abandoned our motorway option and traced our way through the backstreets - slow but at least we kept moving, though it was well past 6 when I got home...