Our intrepid traveller, John Scragg has been out and about again, this time top St.Lucia and has compiled a thorough account of his trip with Cheshire Over 60's...

It was somewhat disappointing to find myself the lone playing representative from UCC especially after the 2014 tour when the club boasted three playing members making the club the biggest providers of old farts on tour.

Unfortunately the tour didn't start off to well. Having spoken to a regular traveller on the perils of travelling to Manchester at silly o’clock in the morning, I was advised to “add a good 50 mins to an hour to your journey time” (your advise was much appreciated Mr Chairman) so I agreed to pick the “wife” up at 6am, considerably earlier than anticipated for a 8am meet. Needless to say the journey to the airport was incident free and we arrived at check in a good 45 minutes ahead of schedule. After hanging around for 20 minutes and with no sign of the rest of the tour party we decided to join the check in queue. After about 30 minutes Barrie decides that his case might be a tad overweight and promptly left the queue to transfer articles of clothing etc. from his suitcase to his hand luggage. On arriving at the check in desk we were asked, for the first time in living memory, to place our hand luggage on the scales. Guess what, yes that’s right Barrie’s hand luggage was now over the permitted limit and the good people of Manchester airport were once again subjected to another transfer of articles, this time back from his hand luggage to his suitcase. After much toing and froing Barrie’s baggage finally met the allotted weight limit and we were able to proceed with our check in.

After an 8:30 hour flight we arrived at Hewanorra International Airport in Vieux Fort. The tour party of 24 consisted of 11 players (whose ages ranged from 55 to 75 years old), two umpires and wives. The airport is situated on the south eastern tip of the island with our hotel, St James Club, Morgan Bay Hotel being on the north western side of the island. This means a transfer trip of some 90 minutes under normal circumstances. However it was just our luck to be travelling at “rush hour”. It always amazes me why they call it “rush hour” when your journey time is increased by nearly one hour. Our driver George was a source of general knowledge and humorous stories and kept us all amused as we crawled through the islands chaotic road system. On arriving at the hotel we were greeted by a procession of smartly dressed waitresses offering a welcome rum punch to each and every guest. Now I was always told that it is rude to refuse such hospitality and not wishing to be rude a group of us made our selves comfortable while reception sorted out our respective rooms. A good hour and six rum punches later armed with our room keys we decided to call a halt on our “welcome drink” and make our way to our rooms. Thankfully the hotel provided transport in the form of adapted golf buggies to take us and our luggage to our allocated rooms. Needless to say we all made us of the transport provided.

The room that Barrie and myself had been allocated was, we found out later a family room and had a connecting door to the bedroom next door. So the first thing that you do on entering such a room is, yes your right try and open the connecting door. Why? The room was massive but only contained one very large bed. Now I like Barrie but not to that extent and fearing the worse if he returned one night after a few “sherbets” I phoned reception and requested that an additional bed be made available. Being a gentleman I let Barrie have first use of the master bed while I said I would take the other bed for the first week. This had all the appearances of a scene from Downton Abbey, with his Lordship in the master bed while his man servant made himself comfortable in a bed that looked like it had been sitting in the A & E department of a 1960’s hospital? The situation was made worse the following morning when I made a pot of coffee and upon asking Barrie which side table he would like his cup placed he replied “you better hand it to me as I can’t reach either table” He was lucky he didn't end up wearing it!

This arrangement last three days before the hotel moved us to a twin bedded room. The hotel itself occupies a 23 acre site and boasts 4 swimming pools, 5 restaurants, 6 bars and an extensive range of water sports, all of which we visited over the next fifteen days.