The Grand Match, also called The Bonspiel, is an outdoor curling tournament, or bonspiel, held most recently on the Lake of Menteith in Stirling, Scotland, when the weather is cold enough. Traditionally it is a match between the north and south of Scotland.
Charles Martin Hardie - Curling at Carsebreck
Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules, and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called rocks, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones once. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.
Curling games taking place during the 2005 Tim Hortons Brier
Detail from a reproduction of Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap (Bruegel, 1565)
A curling match at Eglinton Castle, Ayrshire, Scotland in 1860. The curling house is located to the left of the picture.
Group of people curling on a lake in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, c. 1897