What is The Longthorpe Cup?
In the Dark Ages of The Longthorpe Cup, it was originally a golf competition in Longthorpe, Peterborough, England. Since the Enlightenment in 1994, the modern world competitions have been a variation on the French game petanque.
What is petanque?
Good question. Its like bocce or boules. Wikipedia has good pages for all three games. Its a ball game and there is always potential to make bad puns when talking about the topic: please excuse the awkwardness of the following description.
The basics are: you have heavy metal balls to throw at a small wooden target ball. In our rules each player has three balls. Each team throws their balls at the the wooden one (the pig… a.k.a cochonnet, jack, kitty) in an attempt to leave your balls sitting as close to the pig as possible. Your team get points for all your balls that are closer than your opponents.
When is The Longthorpe Cup?
For all of the modern competitions, The Longthorpe Cup has been played on Cup Weekend. The weekend that precedes the first Tuesday of November in recognition of that famous time on the 4th of November so many years ago.
What do I need to be a part of The Longthorpe Cup?
Some balls and a smile!
Are there any rules for The Longthorpe Cup?
No… Well, yes but they’re easy. The two key points are:
- Ben makes up the rules.
- If (and only if) Ben is not available, an impartial adjudicator may be voted in and called upon.