What began as a holiday romance developed into a full-blown love affair that has continued for more than 30 years.

Margaret Davies started playing bowls at the age of 13 or 14 when she went on family holidays near Lowestoft.

She played every year for three years when the family stayed close to the charming town on the Suffolk coast but like many holiday romances it was soon a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ as she stopped playing the game in her late teens and throughout her 20s.

However, Margaret’s love for the sport was rekindled in her 30s and it has never left her.

Now 70 and captain of the ladies’ section at Bishop’s Cleeve Bowling Club, she told The Local Answer: “I’d enjoyed playing bowls when I was younger but then didn’t play for quite a long time.

“The wives of Plashet Park Bowling Club were fed up with watching their husbands play and decided to form their own club and invited my widowed mother and myself to join them.”

Since then she has never looked back. Margaret was working as a nurse for the NHS in London and the bowls club was set up in East Ham, just a long roll of the jack from West Ham United Football Club in the heart of the East End.

Margaret retired from the NHS seven years ago and moved to Prestbury two years later with her husband George, 81, to be nearer to their family.

They’d already visited Bishop’s Cleeve Bowling club when coming to see their daughter, so had a good feeling about the club before settling in Gloucestershire.

“We’d found the bowls group before we moved and we were very warmly received,” said Margaret, who is in her third year as captain of the ladies’ section.

“We also joined the Bethesda Methodist Church – we’re lifelong Methodists. It’s so important to stay involved when you move to a new area and I’m a firm believer that the more you put in the more you get out.”

Margaret certainly puts plenty in for Bishop’s Cleeve Bowling Club.

“I’ve learned how to coach people,” she said proudly. “We’ve had schoolchildren from Bishop’s Cleeve Junior School come down for a taster session to show them that it is not just a sport for older people and we’re doing the same again this year on June 21st.

“We also had an open day last year for the first time and we got 24 new members.”

Sixteen have re-signed as full members – there are about 130 playing members in total – but the club aren’t holding an open day this year to allow the new players to bed in, although they will welcome existing bowlers and anybody interested in learning how to play bowls.

Margaret and the rest of the club will play a big role in helping the new people to feel at home.

“I like to be involved and the new players who have come along are developing into good bowlers” she said.

That is particularly pleasing for Margaret, speaking with her captain’s hat on, because she retains a strong competitive edge.

The ladies’ section has been doing particularly well and compete in Division One of the Gloucestershire Ladies’ 2-Rink League after winning promotion to the top flight last season.

Margaret admits that she is “quite competitive”. She is the current ladies’ club champion and has won the title three times in the past four years.

The ‘missing’ year was when she had a knee injury and didn’t enter the competition. She has also won the four woods title and the two woods crown twice and her form earned her a call-up to the Gloucestershire side for whom she has just won her county badge.

Margaret is just as pleased when others have success at the club and she was delighted when the club were crowned county four wood champions.

The team were made up of Jill McIlhoney, Janet Tomlinson, Ailsa Brownlie and Rosie Sheridan, with Margaret Young stepping in for Jill when she was taken ill.

“All five names were inscribed on the trophy which was great,” she said.

“Being county champions meant they competed at the All England championships at Leamington Spa and I went and watched them play there which I really enjoyed.”

Although summer is the traditional time that bowls is played – the club go on tour to Bournemouth at the beginning of July – Margaret is keen to stress that the sport is played all the year round at Cleeve as they play short mat in the winter, and the club has a good social life outside bowls.

It’s not all bowls for Margaret, however. Since moving to the area she has become a big fan of the Cheltenham Cricket Festival and plans to visit the picturesque Cheltenham College ground again this summer.

Husband George, who still plays a bit of bowls, is a big football fan. A season-ticket holder at West Ham for many years, Margaret admits that it was a wrench for him to move away from the club he had supported since he was a boy in 2012.

As a Hammers fan George hasn’t had much to celebrate this season but there will be plenty to celebrate closer to home later this year when he and Margaret mark their 50th wedding anniversary.

It’s a milestone that Margaret is justifiably proud of. Bowls is very close to her heart but it’s fair to say it’s not her first love!