Cumbria Indoor Bowls Club

History

The county's indoor bowls centre, on the Viaduct Estate below West Walls. The building went up in 1975 and the playing surface was redone in 2005. There are ten rinks across a hall of forty-five metres by thirty-six, which is a little over 1,600 square metres under one roof, and the scale is why members rate it among the better indoor centres in the country.

It is affiliated to the English Indoor Bowling Association, and its manager is listed as the EIBA's county correspondent for Cumbria, so this is effectively the county's indoor headquarters rather than just a local club. The bowling side is open to newcomers: beginners' courses with equipment supplied, and the bowls itself is listed as pay and play.

The cafeteria gets better notices than most pub kitchens; a Sunday lunch for two at around eleven pounds is the sort of thing that gets mentioned. The bar is a different matter, and it is worth being straight about it. It runs on a club premises certificate, CP015, in force since 24 November 2005 with nothing recorded against it since, and that is a legal distinction rather than a formality.

A certificate authorises a club to supply alcohol to its members and to sell it to a member's guests, and to associate members visiting from another recognised club. It does not authorise selling to the public, so somebody walking in off the Viaduct Estate is not entitled to buy a pint at the bar unless a member takes them in. Clubs vary in how strictly they apply that, and plenty are relaxed about a visitor who has come to bowl, but the position on paper is clear.