The Skegness Open is the first tournament on the Volleyball England Beach Tour. Friday nite I drove up in the 50 tonne tour van with Mark (beach coordinator) and Laurie (acting beach commission president). Along the way we made the mistake of stopping for food at a Little Chef restuarant about 5 miles from Cambridge where the croutons in the ceasar salad were large chunks of deep fried bread that they had just fried in the same fat as everything else that week! we ate the chicken and not much else! Arrived in Skegvegas around 23:30 and set up tents and jumped into bed. There was a large contingent of players all camping for free on a sports field provided by the council.

Saturday I was up at 5am and off to Pleasure B each to help set up. 7 courts plus tents and banners/flags etc. It was wet and windy all day. I played the tunes all day but did very little commentating as I was playing too. There were 21 mens teams and 11 womens so we played pool (pronouced pooell) play to get seedings and then a double elim with 2 divisions in each sex. There was 3000 pounds prize money divided amongst the top 12 in each sex. My partner was Dave Malins, an aussie guy I'd met once before. We had an easy game first up winning in 2 sets, but lost our second game. With only 3 in our pooell this still put us through to the first div double elim. My hamstrings were very sore from touch rugby on thursday nite when I hadnt warmed up (i was late) and both of them had seized up quite badly. This restricted my movement a lot on Saturday but I was glad I could still play at least! We then lost our first double elim game against 2 brothers which I felt we should have won--but we played very badly and again my legs didnt help. Our 2nd game in the main draw was better and we were close all the way against Tristan Sheppard and Micky Celli but lost 21-19 in the first set and then about 21-14 in the second. This put us out with a finish of 9th=. An ok start considering my injury and first time ever playing with Dave.

We had no security for the beach overnite so had to pack everything down which was a real pain and so we didnt leave the beach till 8pm. Vicky and Kathleen came and helped us tho and then booked us a restaurant for dinner. The hot gang showers at the campground were very welcome first tho! After a long good dinner with fun conversation (could listen to Vickys sexy voice all day!), it was back to the tent for a few more hours sleep.

Day 2 and up at 6am and back to set up again (next time we will have security!). Had problems with the generator so bought a new one and then the speakers stopped working. Nightmare! Spent ages trying to figure out the problem but couldnt get anything to happen so couldnt commentate or play music thru all the finals. It was a pity as it was a hot warm sunny day and quite a few people around watching games or going past. Semis and finals were all played out-mostly on centre court and some good volleyball was played and enjoyed. Quite a few of the Great Britain squad were competing which lifted the standard of the weekend. We had a presentation of cheques from the mayor and mayoress and then packed it all up and drove back to London. KFC for dinner on the way and then Mark got sleepy so I drove the last bit. Home around 11:30 and tired!!

A great start to the tour and great to meet a lot of the players here and make some cool new mates! Will be in Ruslip next weekend to do it all again!!