Colerne Parish Council open new pistes at celebration day

Parishioners young and old gathered at the Recreational Park during the afternoon where councillors opened the new £12,000 piste alongside one of their sponsors Hills Waste and parish clerk Glenys Gill said it was a perfect way to end 18 months of fundraising.

She said: "Petanque is becoming very popular across the county and it is spreading like wildfire! It is wonderful because it is such an inclusive sport and any member of the family can play.

"We had young and old people playing together on Saturday and it was fantastic to see and one of the reasons we wanted to do this. The City of Bath Petanque Club were tremendous with us in terms of giving us advice and our sponsors Calne Area Board, Hills Waste, the Gill family, the Wiltshire Community Foundation, Mr T Mordaunt and Colerne Parish Council helped us with the cost.

"We have a huge Thursday league here and we would like to start a club up so that those of us who want to do some more serious games can."

The parish council contingent were joined on the green by children from the Choices group, who were celebrating one year of being active in the great outdoors with zorbing activities and skateboarding demonstrations from Melksham skater James Threlfall.

Two footpaths were also named in memory of two former parish councillors, Mary Harvey and John Bull, who died last year, were also honoured during the day when the path from Silver Street to the gate of the recreational ground was renamed Mary's Way while the connecting path was renamed John's Walk for all their work on providing the footpaths.

The parish clerk added: "It was very moving because we lost them both in such a short space of time and very unexpectedly as well. It is wonderful to commemorate them though because they did work extremely hard to get these footpaths in the first place."