Tennis
We want to start playing more tennis here, so Sue and I had our first game today for an hour first thing, before it got too hot. We had driven around to a few tennis centres last Friday to have a look - 2 were quite small with not many facilities and 2 were much larger operations. Laura plays at one of these larger complexes, but we decided to try out one nearer to us - grandly named the Oxford Falls Tennis Academy!

The advantage of tennis centres here is that there is no annual membership to pay, so that although they are privately run, they are more like council courts and you can just phone up to book a court when you want. The Oxford Falls centre is about 10 minutes drive away and located in the bush with plenty of trees around and quite peaceful. There are 12 courts with all-weather surfaces covered by a thin layer of sand to help grip. Each court also has a small gazebo outside to put your stuff and rest in the shade when you need to!

The tennis centre has a number of social mornings and evenings, but we wanted to get a few practice games done first - and possibly a bit of coaching. It was hard starting off today but it got better as the hour wore on although there were still plenty of wayward strokes on both our parts. We were the only ones playing initially until 2 more courts were occupied, but we'll hopefully make this a regular session each week. The only downside was the flies...