For those who prefer to take life slightly more gentley, the World Marble Championships might seem like the perfect place to chill out.
It might sound like a relaxing way to spend the day, watching people haphazardly tossing marbles, but if the official World Marble Championships web site is to be believed, this is now a highly competitive sport.
Marbles as I remember it usually involved something akin to bowls or curling where you had a centre large marble and rolled your marble to get it closest to the centre point. It appears real marbles involves 3 inches of sharp sand, a referee, a tolley and lots of knuckling down.
Before this starts to sound like the activities in those parts of the city you don’t visit after dark, the “tolley” (not trolley) is simply the marble you use to knock the others and “knuckling down” is the action of effectively flicking the marble.
So in essence, the game is still fairly gentlemanly in its nature*, but those who play it do tend to take things fairly seriously so don’t be surprised if you hear about various secret techniques to knuckle down.
* Woman are quite welcome to take part and have been listed on the World Marble Competition boards since 1987.
Also don’t be too surprised to see a few aircraft coming in low – they’re not international spies from competing nations, but mostly holidaymakers flying into nearby Gatwick Airport.
The championships themselves take place at the Greyhound Public House, Tinsley Green, Sussex RH10 3NS on 22nd Apr 2011.
Just to prove how seriously teams take this (including international delegations), here’s a video from ITN covering a previous World Marble Championship:
More Sussex Links:
British Marbles Championship web site
Crawley visitor attractions (close to Tinsley Green)
Hotels in Crawley
