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The Sheffield leg of the 2023-4 CSC Training Tour was the first of 2024 and the first time I have ever delivered such a day in the famous Steel City. Indeed, the last CSC Training Day in Sheffield was delivered by John Foley and Nevil Chan, back in 2013.
There is a lot more to Sheffield than immediately meets the eye.
For a city with such an industrial reputation, it may be a surprise to learn that there are over two million trees in Sheffield (approximately four per person).
Their musical heritage is very impressive too. Pulp, ABC, Human League, Heaven 17 and Artic Monkeys all began their careers in Sheffield and, conversely, the great Tina Turner played her last concert there (5 May 2009).
Perhaps most surprisingly of all, Sheffield hosted the world's largest spacehopper race in 2020, in which 771 people raced over 100 metres. I would like to let you know who won, but at the time of writing they haven't quite finished.
In the 17th Century, Sheffield was the world's producer of cutlery, which perhaps explains why we saw many forks during yesterday's games.
The venue for our Training Day was the extraordinary Sheffield Chess Centre, created by Jonathan Arnott, who acted as host for the day and whose duties even extended to personally cooking the pizzas requested by the delegates.
What an excellent set of delegates we had! Well done, everyone, for working so hard.
Catherine Lloyd and I enjoyed visiting Sheffield and we are hoping to make a return journey in 2025.
Meanwhile, the CSC Training Day Tour continues and the current schedule can be found here. A couple of new destinations may well be added in due course.
Here is a gallery showing captured moments from our busy day.
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| Mini-games in action |
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| Remember: 'Sharing is caring' |
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The serious playing room is just one of
many features at the Sheffield Chess Centre |
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| Is that Demelza and Poldark...? |
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| Getting to grips with a written exercise |
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| With Jonathan and Catherine |
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| People will tell you, I am never shy about making a point |
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| The group games were certainly intense |
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| Thank you, Sheffield! |
