Bowls for the Blind

In conjunction with the Berkshire Vision

the club hosts a weekly game for blind bowlers

every Thursday morning during the season.

No previous experience of bowls is required.

  The sessions focus on enjoyment and friendship with, it appears to an outsider,

the bowls often relegated to a lesser concern!

Certainly the chat, laughter and eating of birthday cakes

(it seems someone has a birthday every week!) is much to the fore.

We currently have vacancies for more blind bowlers to join us.

No experience is necessary.

If you are interested please get in touch - see our 'contact us' page.

How to play bowls

The game of bowls is the same for blind bowlers as it is for sighted bowlers. The aim is to get your bowls nearer to the jack than any bowl of your opponents. Bowls are delivered from a mat at one end of the green while the target “jack” is at the other end.

A sighted marker helps the blind bowler by describing where the bowls come to rest. He does this using the ‘clock method’ to describe the angle (i.e. time) and distance from the ‘jack’ the bowl has come to rest.  The ‘jack’ is the centre of the clock; therefore, six o’clock would be in front and twelve o’clock behind, with all other positions being relative to the clock.  From the information fed back from the ‘marker’ the player can build up a mental picture of the ‘head’, knowing exactly the position of each bowl in the ‘head’, thus allowing the player who cannot see, to be involved and familiar with the finer points of the game.  The only minor concession made to the blind is that a fine white centre string runs under the mat and is fixed at both ends.  The main object of this centre string is to help the bowler to judge the angle for the amount of green required.