Somerset recorded two wins at the recent UK PADEL Over-50s County Championships at Rocket Padel in Bristol – not bad for a county with no publicly available padel courts!
Within the entire Somerset county border there is just one padel court – at the exclusive Bittescombe Lodge & Deer Park on the edge of Exmoor National Park. It is strictly for the use of residents only.
Padel enthusiasts in Somerset instead have to travel to Bristol, Bournemouth or Torquay to get their fix. But that didn’t stop Stuart Farrar from getting a team together to compete in the recent County Championships.
Stuart, an ex-Yorkshire county squash player, former Millfield School pupil and financial advisor, moved to Somerset in the summer of 2022 from London. Every fortnight, he and a gang of old Millfield friends started car-sharing the one and a half hour journey to Padel4all Lockleaze to learn how to play this new-fangled craze called padel.
When a friend of Stuart, UK PADEL COO and co-founder Neil Percival, told him about the upcoming UK PADEL County Championships at Rocket Padel, Stuart was determined to take part.
Rather like the Lancashire team that The Padel Paper spoke to ahead of the championships, Stuart had to make good use of his contacts book and persuade old friends (and friends of friends) to join in the adventure. Stuart tells us: “You dig out old squash and tennis mates who’ve played a bit of padel on holiday, you roll up, you can all hit the ball and have good coordination – all you’ve got to do is learn how to play padel!”
While Stuart enlisted some of his male friends who had been travelling to Bristol to play for 18 months, he called on Sarah Thomas, Director of Tennis at Millfield, to assemble a team of ladies to join them in representing the county. Sarah brought in Ines Beeson, Millfield’s Admissions Coordinator and tennis coach at Wells Tennis Club, Sian Lewis, a former geography teacher at Millfield, and Sally Atkinson, former Millfield ladies’ squash captain.
The team’s first mix-in session was on 23 January and they travelled to Bristol to train and play every other Tuesday for the next two months.
The team entered the men’s, ladies’ and mixed draws – and ended up winning two matches – against local rivals Avon in the ladies’ and Lancashire in the mixed (as mentioned in our recent article, the Lancs male and female players had never previously met!)
“We were so excited for the six weeks leading up to it and some were a bit nervous,” says Stuart. “I was a bit wary of exposing our team to county-standard players from the likes of Yorkshire, Surrey and Essex, but we were so pleased that we were able to compete.”
Gloucestershire were men’s and mixed champions while Yorkshire took the women’s trophy (full report here). Although Somerset were knocked out in the group stages of all three disciplines, they enjoyed a highly memorable weekend (and Stuart was interviewed live by BBC Radio Somerset whilst sitting in his car).
The team is now eyeing up the UK PADEL Over-40s County Championship on 22-23 June at Rocket Padel Bristol. “We may need to recruit a few 40-50-years-olds to freshen the legs a bit!” chuckles Stuart.
The Somerset skipper adds: “It was wonderful to see the squash and tennis communities come together in an age group event to have fun. We had a great team spirit and lots of support – and we also managed to attract three new ladies to our group who had just come along to watch. Now all we need is to get a padel court of our own.”
