After winning three consecutive away matches, Ottery St Mary’s petanque team at last played on their home terrain at Strawberry Lane, writes Dave West.

The visitors were local rivals from Honiton Petanque Club, previously beaten 3-2 just a fortnight before.

The opening triples saw convincing wins for the home side; John and Rose Thatcher playing with Peter Smith overcame Cecily Young, Jenny Lavender and Larry Halliwell 13-1, while a new combination of Dave West, Del Hansen and Audrey Kempshead took a little longer to beat Janet Driscoll, Chris Bigmore and Charlie O’Reilly 13-3.

With a 2-0 match lead Dave West and Del Hansen carried on the good work by convincingly winning 13-1 against visitors Janet Driscoll and Charlie O’Reilly to ensure that Ottery had wrapped up an overall success after just three disciplines of the match.

Audrey Kempshead and Peter Smith almost made it another game for the home team before going down 13-11 to Jenny Lavender and Chris Bigmore.

John and Rose Thatcher resumed the Otters dominance by beating Cecily Young and Larry Halliwell 13-7 to give a match result of 4-1 in favour of the home side.

Ottery’s next league outing is again at home on Sunday, May 21, with a morning game against The Pig on the Hill and an afternoon fixture with the other North Devon club, Torridge U3A.

Before that, however, Ottery St Mary will hold it’s annual Charity Shield event to raise money for Hospicecare and the sixteen doubles places are already filled.

Anyone interested in seeing the game in action - and spending money on raffle tickets or try lunchtime fun events to boost fund raising - will be very welcome. From Wednesday, May 17, the club’s Wednesday meetings will start from 7pm.