ANY SPORT IN WHICH YOU CAN pour a drink after taking a shot, have a couple of mouthfuls and return to find that the ball is still moving is my sort of athletic activity. “This must be the slowest sport in the world,” says Phil Edgerley, an English expat, as he introduces me to BOULE DE FORT, a game played only in the Anjou region of France.
We are in the small village of Broc, standing on the boule court in carpet slippers. A sign instructs joueurs not to play in wellington, the ships that sail on the shallow Loire river.