Decathlon shutters its USA stores

Decathlon, a French sporting goods chain which briefly was a source of inexpensive high-quality petanque gear and competition boules in the USA, has shut down its operations in the USA. On March 6, 2022, it closed all of its retail locations in the USA (basically, its two stores in the San Francisco area). Its website says that in the future, it plans to focus on other channels to distribute Decathlon products, including the Decathlon website (decathlon.com) and a number of retail partners.

Unfortunately, although Decathlon.com is still up and running, NO petanque products are available there. Petanque equipment is still available from Decathlon Canada . The site navigation is a bit confusing. The page for the popular Geologic Alpha boules is HERE.

For a bit more information about Decathlon’s American operations, see our 2018 post Decathlon comes to the USA and starts selling Geologic boules.

---

Two boules in a leather carrier. Why?

A question from Ray—

Most (all?) leisure sets come as a set of three boules. On eBay and antique sites I see balls in a two-ball set, with leather carrier. Why two? Is it perhaps that most people once played triples?

The answer is YES, Ray, you hit the nail on the head.

In The Beginning, petanque was a triples game. That is, it was played by two teams of three players, with each player playing with two boules. That’s why on places like eBay and Etsy, you often see an offer of an old set of two boules in a traditional leather-strap carrying case.

In 1959, the newly-created FIPJP issued its first set of rules, and this was the first time that an official set of rules mentioned a doubles version of the game. In the 1962 version of the rules, we see the now-familiar listing of three officially-accepted forms of the game— triples, doubles, and singles (tête-à-tête).

Doubles quickly became popular, and in response boules manufacturers began selling boules in sets of three. For a long time they continued also to sell boules in sets of two, but the market for 2-boule sets steadily declined until Obut finally stopped selling sets of 2 competition boules in 2012.

Many of the sets of two boules that you see on eBay and Etsy are old, some of them dating as far back as the 1930s. But Obut continued selling two-boule sets right up to 2012, so some of the sets may actually be quite new. The DOG leisure boules that Obut sold after World War II, for instance, were sold in pairs.

There seems to have been two basic designs for the leather carrier. One very popular design used long leather straps that could slide in and out through metal rings.

The other design was more compact, with a belt and a belt buckle between the boules.

Sometimes the carrier had a little built-in pocket for carrying a jack.

In July 2010 the international media went into a frenzy after Karl Lagerfeld threw a party in St. Tropez for The Beautiful People. He gave them free customized Chanel boules. Pretty spiffy!

---

New book— “Winning Petanque”

Petanque players begin life by going through a complete novice stage in which they learn the basics of the game, the basics of the rules, the basics of how to throw a boule, the basics of strategy, etc. etc. Some remain at that stage forever (which I totally approve; relaxing and puttering around with your friends is one of life’s great joys). But others move on to a “new player” stage, in which they actively start to search for information about how to get better at the game.

For those players, for the last decade the only decent English-language book on petanque has been Byron Putman’s 2011 book “Pétanque: The Greatest Game You Never Heard Of”, which is quite good as a general introduction to the game and is still very much worth reading.

---

But now (as of April 20, 2022) we have something that more precisely meets the needs of new players. It is Harwell Thrasher’s “Winning Petanque”. Thrasher’s new book is aimed at new players, and it does an excellent job of filling their needs for information about everything from how to throw a boule to game strategy and techniques. The book is clear, correct, easy to read, and comprehensive. Friends who have read the book, and the reviews on Amazon.com, are all extremely positive.

If you wish, you can go to Amazon.com and “look inside” to see the table of contents. But the bottom line is that without question, “Winning Petanque” is absolutely the best English-language book available to meet the needs of a petanque player who wants genuinely useful information about how to become a better player.

Thrasher, I believe, learned the game and still plays with the Atlanta Petanque League. And his writing style reflects what might be considered a “no nonsense” American attitude toward getting better at the game. The prose is simple, clear, un-ornamented, and straight-to-the point. One amazon reviewer wrote that the book “is a “how to” engineering manual, without rhetorical flourishes or fancy jargon. Every line contains useful information.”

The book does not deal with anything outside of ways to play better. There are no French cultural or historic references, no use of French petanque terminology, and no discussions of player psychology, concentration, or mental strength and focus. If you want that, you might look at Sam Porter’s inexpensive Kindle book “TWO BALLS AND HALF A BRAIN: A Mindful approach to Petanque playing”.

---

A short history of petanque

A short history of petanque (12 pages) | docx | pdf |
by Stephen Ferg (revised 2022-06-06)

If you are interested in the history of petanque, I highly recommend Jac Verheul’s Facebook group La Fabuleuse Histoire de la Pétanque – Les premières années. It is the source of several of the photographs of early petanque in this paper.

See also our posts in the category of petanque history.

---

How to make a magnetic throwing circle

Some of our players have serious back issues. We began to help them by making our own “magnetic” jacks that can be lifted with a magnetic boule lifter. Our players liked the magnetic jacks, and asked if we could make a magnetic throwing circle, too.

It turned out that we could. See our page on Make a magnetic throwing circle

---

Terminology – what is a “null point”?

The concept of a null point is an important one, yet it is virtually unknow to English-speaking petanque players. So— What is a null point?

At any time during a mène (end, round) the game must be in one of two states.

• One of the teams has the point.
• Neither of the teams has the point.

In French, when one of the teams has the point, we say— “team X has the point” (l’équipe X a le point).

If neither team has the point, we say— “there is a null point” (il y a un point nul) or “the point is null” (le point est nul).

It is as simple as that. When neither team has the point, the point is null.

There are two situations in which the point is null.

• The best boules of each team are equidistant from the jack, so that neither boule is closer than the other.
• There are no boules on the terrain.

There are special rules for how to continue when the point is null— see our post on Which team throws next.

So, you ask— Why have I never heard the expression “null point”?

The answer is— Because the English version of the FIPJP rules mistranslates the expression “null point”. The last sentence of Article 16 of the French rules is this:

Si aucune boule ne se trouve plus en terrain autorisé à la suite d’un tir ou d’un appoint, il est fait application des dispositions de l’article 29 relatives au point nul.

The 2020 English version of of the FIPJP rules (incorrectly) translates point nul as a dead end.

If after shooting or pointing no boules are left on the designated playing area, the arrangements concerning a dead end as defined in article 29 apply.

Since this is the only place where the expression point nul occurs in the FIPJP rules, mistranslating it in this one place almost guarantees that English-speaking players will never read or hear the expression.

An equidistant-boules situation. Neither team has the closest boule— the point is null. Note that the jack is not dead.

Some practical advice for buying your first set of petanque boules

When a new player joins our group, we’re happy to lend him/her a set of guest boules to use while trying out and learning the game. Some new players turn into regular players. When that happens, they usually decide to buy their own set of boules, and they ask for advice about buying boules. Here is my attempt at short, simple, practical advice for players who are ready to buy their first set of petanque boules.

Note that this is my advice— someone else’s may be different. Much of this information is condensed or summarized from other posts, including our basic Buying Boules and Buying Competition Boules pages.

I always recommend that a player’s first set of boules should be a set of leisure boules from Petanque America. For one thing, Petanque America sells only proper sets of three boules (unlike sets of “bocce/petanque” boules for sale elsewhere). For another, leisure boules are reasonably priced. Don’t spend a lot of money on a set of competition boules until you’ve played long enough to be sure that that is what you want.

There’s another reason to start with inexpensive boules. You may develop ambitions to learn how to shoot. Learning to shoot requires a lot of practice. The best way to practice is to buy several sets of similar boules, so that you can throw a lot of boules in succession before having to retrieve the thrown boules and re-load your boule bucket. (I practice with seven sets— 21 boules.) If you’re buying several sets, you need to keep your cost-per-set within affordable limits.

COMPETITION BOULES

After playing regularly for a year or two with leisure boules, some players decide to buy their first set of competition boules. This means that they have choices to make about size, weight, material, hardness, and grooves. There is a huge amount of traditional advice on these subjects. Some of it is good for some players (advanced) but not for others (beginning/mid-level). Some of it is contradictory. Some of it is pure folklore. Most of it is rubbish. Ignore it.

For size, I recommend one size, 73mm, for almost everyone. For almost everyone, this size is just right — neither too big nor too small — and easy to get comfortable with. And if you’ve been practicing shooting (see above), this is the same size as the leisure boules that you’ve been practicing with.

There is one exception to my standard recommendation. Many of our women players are petite. With smaller hands, they struggle to grip a 73mm boule. For them (or for anyone who finds 73mm to be too big), I recommend a size of 71mm, or (if they can get it) the smallest size available, 70.5mm. For many petite women, playing with a 70.5mm boule rather than 73mm can make a real difference.

For weight, I recommend 680 grams. Everybody finds that this is a comfortable weight, and you don’t really need anything heavier.

For material, I recommend carbon steel (acier) rather than stainless steel (inox). It tends to be less expensive than stainless steel. Unlike stainless, you can pick it up with a magnetic boule-lifter. If you deliberately want to rust your carbon steel boules to give them a slightly rougher surface, you can. The one advantage of stainless steel is that it resists rust. Rust usually isn’t a serious issue for carbon steel boules, but if you live in a hot, wet climate and other players tell you that they use stainless boules because they’ve found that rust is an issue, follow their example.

For hardness, I recommend a “hard” rather than a “soft” boule. If this is your first set of competition boules (and especially if you frequently play on rough terrain), you probably need high scratch resistance more than low bounciness. And when you shoot and nick a target boule, you want it to go flying as far as possible.

For grooves, I recommend a boule with at least a few grooves, rather than no grooves at all. A bit of paint or magic marker in the grooves will last a reasonable amount of time and will help to identify your boules. High-profile shooters play with smooth boules (and you can too, when you get to be a high-profile shooter) but for your first set of competition boules, go with the grooves.

First-time buyers often ask for specific recommendations about what competition boules to buy and where to buy them. As of September 2021, for players located in the USA, I recommend—

• Geologic Alpha from Decathlon
• La Franc SM (hard) or SB (soft) from Petanque America.
• Obut Match from Petanque America.

Obut boules are more expensive than Geologic or La Franc boules, but Obut has about an 80% share of the world-wide market for competition boules and is without doubt the most widely-recognized brand of boules in the world.

Petanque America: “La Franc boules are back!”

Philippe Boets reports that Petanque America is again selling La Franc boules! They are available now! Visit petanqueamerica.com/lafrancboule.html

La Franc boules are made in Thailand. They are high-quality competition boules, reasonably priced, with a good selection of weights, sizes, and groove patterns. I especially like the glossy matte finish on the carbon-steel boules. It looks great and it feels good in the hand.

In the past… for many years… a set of La Franc boules from Petanque America was the standard choice for a first set of competition boules. It was also the first choice for players who understood that you don’t actually play better with an expensive set of boules! But there started to be shipping problems, supplies became unreliable, and in 2016 Philippe reluctantly decided to stop selling La Franc boules.

That was four years ago. Since then, things have changed. There are now a lot of new converts to the game in the US. There is a healthy demand for affordable competition boules with a good selection of weights, sizes, and groove patterns The dollar/euro exchange rate has shifted to favor La Franc. So Philippe decided to reconnect with La Franc, and La Franc responded quickly and efficiently. The bottom line is that Petanque America is again selling La Franc boules, and the future is looking bright for La Franc boules in the USA.

Here is a set that I just ordered. As you can see, the old cardboard-box packaging is gone. We now have a sturdy plastic carrier, similar to the way that Geologic boules are packaged. These carriers are pretty useless, of course. You really need a sturdy bag that can hold your boule towel, measuring tape, spare jacks, etc. Still, it looks nice.

La Circulaire – a lesser-known pétanque tradition

Almost from the day that petanque was invented in 1910, petanque players have experimented with tools and methods for drawing a throwing circle on the ground. Using a foot to swipe a curve (courbe) in the dirt was crude. Drawing a cicle with a finger left you with dirty hands. Using a stick worked well, but suitable sticks weren’t always readily available. Players began to experiment with specialized tools for drawing circles, and in the process they created one of the lesser-known pétanque traditions— that of l’outil pour faire le cercle or simply la circulaire.

The most popular type of circulaire was made from the tip of the horn of the Alpine Ibex. Some were simply polished, but there was also a tradition of elaborately carving the horns. Possibly because many of the carved circulaires were created by sailors (who played petanque while in port and carved scrimshaw while at sea), one of the most popular designs was of a mermaid holding up two boules. In 1971, the founders of Starbucks Coffee adapted that design to create the first version of their company logo. The design was altered so that the mermaid’s tails cover the boules in her hands, but you can still see the boules in the band surrounding the image.

Carved circulaires were never widely used, partly because only a few of them were ever created, partly because they were expensive, and partly because the Alpine Ibex had been hunted almost to extinction. Some players improvised circulaires from old screwdrivers and, more recently, old ballpoint pens. Some players opted for a manufactured “petanque marker”, a version of which is still available from PetanqueShop.com.

Although these designs were functional and effective, I’ve always felt that they were a bit clunky. Recently I found a new, streamlined design that I actually prefer. It is long enough to provide a good grip and good freedom of motion for the wrist. There is a nice rubber cushion on the handle. A graphite core keeps the weight down, and its slim design allows it eaily to be tucked away in a pocket. It is available for €16 at PetanquePoisson.com.

[Originally published 2020-04-01.  Reposted with permission.]

 
[Additional text added 2021-01-04]
This post is, of course, an April Fool joke. It is true, however, that petanque players have been known to make tools specialized for marking the circle. Here are a couple that I found on a German Facebook group. This one adds a circle-marker to the handle end of a strap for a magnetic boule lifter.

This one puts a circle-marker on a retractable key holder. Watch a short video HERE.

[Additional text added 2024-05-04]
After years of experimentation in this subject, my personal implement of choice is a wooden or plastic chopstick, cut to a length of 19 cm. I drill a small hole in the handle and tie a piece of brightly-colored plastic to my circle-marker, to make it more easily visible if I drop it.

Comparing online translators

Online translators can be tremendously useful for those of us who are not bilingual (or at least not fluently). This year I wanted to translate a simple sentence from English into French. I ran it through four different free online translation sites. Here is how those sites compare.

• English: “Father Christmas says that Christmas may be late this year.”
• Desired French: “Le Père Noël dit que Noël pourrait être en retard cette année.”

Skip to THE BOTTOM LINE

INTRODUCTION

There are a number of criteria that we can use to evaluate a translation site.

• Is the translation correct? Are there any typographic or spelling or grammar or vocabulary errors?
• How good is the translation?  Is it idomatic?  Does it make good or poor vocabulary choices?
• Is the user interface user-friendly?  Can you easily switch the FROM and TO languages?
• Are there limits on the length of the text that can be translated?
• In addition to translation, does the site offer any other useful tools?

GOOGLE TRANSLATE  https://translate.google.com/
Click to open a larger image.

Google can translate only short passages.  Its translation had one capitalization error.  The SWITCH LANGUAGES feature is primitive.  User interface is not user-friendly.

 

BING (MICROSOFT) TRANSLATE  https://www.bing.com/translator
Click to open a larger image.

The user interface is good.  A major CON is that the translation had the most errors (3) of any of the sites.   On the other hand, it was the only site where you could hear the translated text in good native-speaker French. It can translate up to 5000 characters.

 

SYSTRAN https://translate.systran.net/translationTools/text
Click to open a larger image.The user interface is good.  It is possible to hear the translation, but the spoken French is terrible – it was what you’d hear from an American who doesn’t know any French and is phonetically sounding out the written text.  It can translate up to 5000 characters.

Systran seems to be the most full-featured of all of the sites.  It provides a lot of vocabulary tips and offers alternate translations based on different “models”. 
Click to open a larger image.

 

DEEPL https://www.deepl.com/translator
Click to open a larger image.
Click to open a larger image.

DeepL has a good user interface and produced the best translation of any of the sites.  The real strength of DeepL is that you can upload a long document in .docx format and DeepL will translate it for you.  This is the only site that offers that feature.

THE BOTTOM LINE

DeepL is our winner.  It produced the best translation (zero errors), has a simple and friendly user interface, and can translate uploaded documents.

Systran is a strong runner-up.  It did a good job at translation and offers a lot of useful extras.

Our obvious losers are Google and Bing (Microsoft).  Google Translate has an extremely crude user interface that is actually unpleasant to use.  Bing‘s translation was the worst of all of the sites, with 3 outright errors.  However, it gets an honorable mention for its good user interface and its ability to produce good spoken French.

---

An open letter to that third boule

AN OPEN LETTER TO THAT THIRD BOULE
Lee Harris, Portland Petanque Club, Portland, Oregon, USA (August 29, 2019)

If I could be judged solely on the merits of you, my third boule, then I would be likened to the greatest players in petanque.

But I must be honest with myself. Your greatness is no reflection on me. You are ever flawless in execution and I marvel at thee.

Contrary to the first and second boule to leave my hand this end, you plot your own course, and refuse to follow in the ruts that your predecessors did.

You are unlike your two fellows, who went where I threw them and not where I desired that they should go. You threw off conformity to mark your own path, casually rolling past the barricade of boules, to nudge your boxwood compatriot. I pump my arm in salute to you. Bob, I believe I shall call you, Bob.

The magic yellow line comes to televised petanque

If you watch American football on television, you’re familiar with the magic yellow line. Incredibly powerful computer technology now makes it possible to superimpose computer-generated graphics onto the moving images of the game in such a way that the graphics appear to be physically painted onto the playing field. This technology was first used to display the first-and-ten line as a yellow line on the field (hence the name “magic yellow line”) but now it has advanced to the point where many other graphical elements can also be inserted onto the screen.

This technology has finally made its way to televised petanque. I’ve been wishing for it for a long time, and now it’s here. You can see it at a few scattered places in the 2017 Eurocup Finale on Youtube.

CLICK to view larger image

CLICK to view larger image

CLICK to view larger image
The technology isn’t yet perfect— the 10m10 distance shown in the first image was wrong. (The umpires measured it at 9m73, so the jack was good.) But of course it will get better.

The Ten Commandments of Petanque (postcards)

Paul Ordner had a long and successful career (starting in 1923) as a commercial artist, creating illustrations for advertisments, magazine covers, and posters (especially for sports-related magazines and events) as well as humorous and political cartoons. Around 1960 he began creating humorous drawings and cartoons for postcard publisher Éditions Photochrome à Toulouse. Eventually he designed almost 300 cards. He died in 1969 at age 68. A book of his art, Paul Ordner: 40 ans de dessin sportif, humoristique et politique, was published in 2014.

His series of postcards called “The Ten Commandments of Petanque” (Les Dix Commandements de la Pétanque) is popular with Petanque players.

01: You may tell your wife to go to hell, but thou shalt finish the game first.

How NOT to fly with boules

For a long time we’ve warned players not to put their boules in their carry-on luggage when they fly. In the United States, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers consider boules to be dangerous objects (like hammers) and will not allow them to be carried onto a plane in carry-on luggage.

Unboxing Obut order from PetanqueAmerica

I ordered some jacks, an umpire’s folding ruler, and a set of the new Obut stainless steel leisure boules from Petanque America.

jacks
The first item in the order was several orange Obut jacks. I’d seen the orange jacks on Youtube videos and the color seemed to be easy to see. I’d describe the color as matte (not glossy) flourescent orange.

How to send text messages from your laptop or PC

If you’re trying to co-ordinate a group of petanque players, it can sometimes be handy to be able to send them text messages via email from your laptop or PC. Here’s how to do it.

The first thing you need to know is that, for the purposes of emailing a text message, each cell phone has an ordinary email address. The format of that address is

phoneNumber@carrierSMSgateway

The phoneNumber should be 10 digits. It should include the area code. It should include only numbers – no dashes or parentheses. So for a phone number of (333) 444-5555 the phoneNumber in the email address is 3334445555.

The carrierSMSgateway is the SMS (“Short Message Service”) gateway provided by the telephone carrier. If you know a telephone number, there are several free web sites that will let you look up the carrier of that number, and the carrier’s SMS gateway. One web site that I found easy to use was freecarrierlookup.com

In the image, you can see that the carrier for this particular number is Verizon Wireless, and Verizon’s SMS gateway is vtext.com. Very conveniently, freecarrierlookup.com provides the full SMS gateway address (5206644133@vtext.com) for the number that was looked up, so I can just copy-and-paste it into my email program.

When the recipient receives your text message, he will see your email address (the “Reply-to” email address that you provided when you sent your email message) in the place where he would normally see the caller’s telephone number. If the recipient replies to your text message, his reply will be sent to that email address.

But, a WARNING—

Email providers often regard email that is sent from a telephone number as coming from an unknown or suspect source. Some will flag such email as spam, so that the reply ends up in your email’s JUNK MAIL folder. Some will greylist the reply and delay it (this message was delayed for an hour).

X-Greylist delayed 3601 seconds by postgrey-1.34 at mail8.webfaction.com

Some email providers will silently and completely filter out the reply— you receive no reply and no indication whatsoever that the recipient replied to your message. So, at least until you’ve experimented and determined otherwise, don’t assume that replies to your text message will get through to you.

When the recipient receives your text message, he will receive a text message consisting of the SUBJECT line of your email message (in parentheses) followed by the text of the message. You can use a very short subject line. When I send a text message with a question, I like to make the subject line just a question mark, so the recipient gets a text message that starts with “(?)”.

Keep your messages (including the SUBJECT line) short. Try to keep the whole thing to less than 160 characters. If your message is longer than 160 characters, your message will be broken down into chunks of 153 characters, and each chunk will be sent as a separate text message. Some carriers are smart enough to re-assemble the short chunks into one long text message, but most are not.

If you’d like to review your message before sending it to others, send it to your own phone. Then, if it looks good, you can send it to the real recipients.

Note that this information only applies to telephone numbers with US and Canada area codes. That is: numbers with country code = 1. You can send text messages to foreign countries, too. When dialing, you first specify your country’s “exit code” to get onto the international exchange, then you specify the recipient’s country code and his telephone number. For international dialing, one source that I found to be useful was www.howtocallabroad.com. It will tell you, for instance, that the exit code for the USA is 011.

---

How to watch petanque on region-restricted web sites

The 2016 world championships were streamed online on a French TV channel. But if you wanted to watch the champtionships, and lived in the USA, and went to La chaîne l’Équipe to watch the championships, what you saw was a “region restricted” message. You can see it HERE.

In this post I describe the tool that I used to get around the region restrictions and watch the championships. If you’re interested in the technology behind region restriction, and the ways to get around region restrictions, Google THIS.

How to blacken your boules

For more tips, see the comments on our post about removing rust from your boules
Why blacken your boules? Perhaps you want to make it easier to tell your boules from other players’ boules. Perhaps you simply like the color.

Gun blacking wears off quickly. Black magic marker (permanent marker) leaves your boules slightly sticky. Kim Badcock, of the Mission Beach Petanque Club in Australia, has a better suggestion.

A soak or wipe-over with a very weak acid solution (vinegar, lemon juice, yellow mustard) will change the outer molecular layers of your boule to magnetite (“black rust”). Quickly wipe with an oiled cloth afterwards to help seal in the coloring.

This should work with all carbon-steel boules. It shouldn’t work with stainless steel boules or with chrome-plated boules (which means that it shouldn’t work with leisure boules).

Following Kim’s suggestion, I bought a jug of distilled white vinegar. I left two La Franc SB boules to soak in the vinegar overnight. (La Franc SB boules are relatively soft carbon-steel boules, acier au carbone.) In the morning they were really black. When I washed them off, a lot of black came off on my hands. The boules were left with a deep uniform matte gunmetal grey color. There was a small shiny spot where they had been sitting on the bottom of the container.

In this picture, the brownish boule in the front is a rusty boule that has been brought back from the dead. The two vinegar-blackened boules are at the back. The boule at the left has been played with more than the boule at the right, so it is more scratched-up. The image doesn’t really capture the color of the boules. The boules, while not absolutely black, are a much darker grey than they appear in the photo. In play, they do appear to be black.
Click to see larger image.

This picture was taken immediately after I treated the boules. The color was relatively long-lasting, but after about 5 months and about 50 hours of play, the boules began to look a bit shiny. So I blackened them again. Soaking them for 6 hours in distilled white vinegar restored them to the condition that you see in the pictures.

---

How to remove magic marker from boules

During the off season I like to play solitaire. To make it easy to distinguish the two sets of boules, I cover one set pretty completely with black magic marker. When regular play resumes, I can easily remove remove the black marks with a product called “Goof Off”. You might be able to find it at your local hardware or hobby store. Otherwise, it is available via Amazon.com or from www.goof-off.com.

---

Night play beside the baseball fields

Tucson’s climate is warm and dry (like the South of France) and there are many places in public parks that make fine petanque terrains. We don’t need a dedicated petanque boulodrome (although an air-conditioned one in summer would be nice). We prefer to play in the park on an open terrain.

There is, however, one problem with this arrangement. We can’t play after dark because none of the places where we play during the day has lights for night play.

There is a solution to this problem. I’m blogging about it because the solution is probably available in other cities, too.

 
In Tucson, the city and the county have a variety of public recreational facilities— parks, swimming pools, and community centers. There are also several large sports complexes scattered around the city. These facilities are designed to support sports that require large playing fields— baseball, (American) football, and soccer.

In these sports complexes, the baseball fields are typically pie-shaped. They are laid out in a large circular area that is divided into four quarters by wide gravel paths. There is one baseball diamond in each quarter. The paths between the fields give players and spectators access to the fields and to viewing stands. Tall posts supporting floodlights are located on the paths— the floodlights are very bright, and illuminate the fields on both sides of the paths as well as the paths themselves.

The paths are very wide. Because people walk across them a lot, they are hard-packed. They make perfect petanque terrains.

Aerial view (courtesy of Google Maps) of a typical sports complex— the Golf Links Sports Complex— in Tucson, Arizona, USA. The main entrance is from the parking lot in the upper right-hand corner of the photo.

Monday through Thursday evenings, city-league softball games are played on the fields. Games are scheduled for three time slots beginning at 6:30, 7:35pm, and 8:45pm. While games are in progress (roughly between 6:30pm and 10:00pm) the fields and paths are brightly lit by the floodlights located on the paths.

Between games players arrive and leave before and after their games, and there is a lot of foot traffic on the paths. But once the softball games have begun, the paths are virtually empty. The empty paths make excellent lighted petanque terrains.

View from the main entrance of the Golf Links Sports Complex in Tucson, Arizona. The access path for the baseball diamonds makes a perfect lighted terrain for night play.

The moral of the story…
What worked in our town might also work in yours. If you’re looking for a location for night play of petanque, you might be able to use facilities built for night play of other sports.