Royal Berkshire Disc Golf, Dinton Pastures, Berkshire, England

This has been such a strange year with lots of sadness as a result of Covid-19, yet such positive moves on the Disc Golf scene. At a time when it's been unthinkable to grow any sport, due to the many restrictions on social activities and gatherings, one of the sports that has thrived is Disc Golf. Many people have continued to get on courses or their local park to throw discs, keeping to the social distancing rules. We've seen new people from other sports come and try out Disc Golf as well. What has been interesting, due to the nature of the sport and by adapting the way it can function, are the number of new as well as established Disc Golf events that have been successfully held.

One such new event that popped up on social media not long after we had got back from our tour of Mendip, Quarry Park and Cotswold View courses was this one....

A series of 3 events on different days of the week, hosted by a woman (Lou), to encourage more women to come and play or at least have a go at throwing a disc or two. The different days and times were planned to provide accessible windows for play, with consideration to those with various work patterns or child care needs. 

Sport of any kind is often something a large number of women end up relinquishing because of work/career, having a family and being a homemaker. Generally speaking less women continue to participate in sport because of these reasons than men. Once women stop, its often harder to get back into sport I would say, due to lack of information of whats out there to participate in, access for their age group during and post kids, and having the confidence. The gym or running are often the fall back.

Since starting Disc Golf and educating myself on the sport and the scene, I hear comments like "we need to grow the sport", "we need to get more people into it". The first things that springs to mind for many is "lets get more women involved" and thats true there should be more in the sport, yet it seems to me that its left to the women to make this happen! The percentage of women playing and then competing is so small in the UK, and some have never met, how are they supposed to "grow the sport" without support. One or two voices can only have a small impact in a very local way but with the help and support of others it could be more.

With this in mind it only seemed right to go and support this event, even though it was well over 4hrs drive away for us. I got in touch with Lou to let her know we were coming and she very kindly offered for us to park up and stay in our motorhome at her home, which was great and not that far from the venue, Dinton Pastures Country Park.

Royal Berkshire Dinton Pastures Disc Golf Course was established in 2016 and designed by Russell Westwood and Martin Hough. It's a moderately wooded and hilly course, set within the site of Dinton Pastures Country Park, along side Black Swan Lake. The park itself is multi use and therefore you do have walkers crossing the fairways and sometimes having a picnic! So please be mindful on some of the blind drive shots on this course and use a spotter.

There is ample parking which is pay and display, however the Disc Golf course is free to play if you have your own discs. If you wish to hire discs you can find the costs by clicking on this link (Disc Golf Cost). There are toilets, showers and changing rooms and also a cafe at the other end of the park to the disc golf course.

This is home to Berkshire Disc Golf Club. The course has grass Tee points with an 8 Hole short Red Course Par 24, 1987ft and 18 Hole intermediate White Course, Par 58, 5856ft. It's been well thought out using the trees and hilly sections from what was originally a ball golf course, to create a long and challenging disc golf course which can be affected by cross winds, and that makes some of the holes interesting to say the least. You will need UDisc to help you round the first time, just to get your bearings.

We drove down the day before the event and decided to play a round from the White tees. It was a very very hot day, one of the hottest of the year, and we were out playing disc golf in the middle of the afternoon! We luckily had taken water out with us on the course. With the breeze and the sun we were dehydrating and needed that water.

We found a number of holes tricky on this course because of the strategic positioning of baskets in relation to trees and slopes as well as a cross breeze. Some of my lighter weight discs definitely didn't like it and went off in some unplanned directions. Something I may need to think about going forward is weight of discs as well as discs that cope better in a headwind. I'm not sure at this stage what copes in a crosswind, but that will be for me to research. May be it's more to do with technique and keeping the disc low, but how to do that when you have to throw up a hill, is still a mystery to me.

I was actually pleased with my score on this course considering the challenging conditions. I was so busy trying to figure out what to throw and keep hydrated that I completely forgot to take any photographs on both days.

The next day was another hot day and we joined in with the Chicks with Discs event, chatting with people who came on the course and getting some of the women engaged with holding and throwing discs. We definitely need more events like this around the country to encourage participation from every age group and gender. We obviously only participated in the first event and thanks goes to Lou for putting this and the others on and creating an opportunity to grow the sport. 

We later played a round with Lou, Russ, Martin and Davyd. It was really enjoyable and I'd like to thank them for how welcome they made us newbies feel. We had a fun afternoon playing and learning, with a socially distanced social afterwards.

Again I'm not sure where UDisc got its weather data!

This had been a great opportunity to meet other players who are keen on growing the sport of disc golf and play with them on yet another course. Thanks guys. Get yourselves to Royal Berks and give it a go and if you want some real fun choose a windy day 😁.

We had decided to break the journey home by taking in another disc golf course en route, Mereside near Shrewsbury, which will be in my next episode, up the road.