Icur Rotary World Curling Championships

After qualifying through the previous Rams Head Scottish Rotary Curling Championships, the rink from the Rotary Club of Perth comprising Skip Alay Milne, Vice Skip Bill Duncan, Second Grant Martin, and lead Anna Martin organised the trip to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada to compete in the Championship event at the bi-annual Championships.

However, before the event got underway, we had a set-back.  Grant was unable to travel due to a difficulty with his visa, which was only established the evening before we were going to fly, so only three Perth members set off from Edinburgh Airport via Dublin to Toronto, where we joined up with four Forfar Rotarians to make the two hour journey to Peterborough. We arrived on Thursday evening, and Friday was a practice day prior to the opening games on Saturday afternoon. It was at this point that we realised that although we had hoped that Grant Martin would be able to resolve his visa issue, that we were only three players which would be a major issue. However, after a bit of negotiation it was agreed that we could utilise a player from the Rotary Club of Dumfries Devorgilla which had travelled as a 5 man team. During the week we had both Andrew Clark and Godfrey Bedford fill in at lead or second for all games.

The curling was tough, and without our full team we played to the best of our abilities, and managed to win 3 games from 9 which left us just below mid table - we had the opportunity to qualify for the Knockout stages had we won our final two games, but as they were against one of the finalists, and a semi-finalist, we didn't manage that.

However, we thoroughly enjoyed a great week of curling, meeting old and new friends, and enjoying fabulous Rotary Fellowship at the Opening and Closing Banquests, a joint meeting of all three Peterborough Rotary Clubs, home hosting, and various other organised events.  We did have time to enjoy the company of other teams whilst eating out and having the odd refreshment on the free nights.

The journey home started on Saturday at 12.30pm en route to Pearson Airport in Toronto, but thereafter things started to go wrong as we sat on the Aer Lingus flight from 4.45pm to around 7pm before being told that the flight was cancelled. After trying to find another flight to get us home that day, we eventually were put up in a hotel close to the airport at 1am and told that we might get a text to advise what was going to happen. We eventually got some food at 1am and got to bed around 2am although Anna had set her alarm for 4am to phone the travel agent but this didn't help get a flight. However, waking up the next morning we found that Aer Lingus had us booked on a KLM flight to Amsterdam that evening with a connecting flight to Edinburgh the following morning. 

So we got home around 24 hours after the original arrival time having had a great time, but with Alay and Anna having missed a day's work.

A great adventure.    

Alay, Bill, and Anna