page_title: Basque bowls
section_title: Oholtzar pasaboloa
hierarchical_section_title: Basque bowls / Particular variants / Oholtzar pasaboloa
caption_attribution_description: Graphic for Oholtzar pasaboloa
context_page_description: Basque bowls, is one of the few Basque rural sports which do not originate in an activity related to rural or marine work. It has a number of other names too and is played in a bolatoki or bolaleku "bowls place" which often consists of a playing area in the open, an open sided structure with a low roof or a playing area located inside a colonnaded hallway.
  The game has been more common in the southern parts of the Basque Country in the last few centuries, especially in Álava and Biscay and to a lesser degree in Gipuzkoa and Navarre but documents from the Bayonne archives from the 17th-century mention the games and there is also other evidence to show that the game was also played historically in the northern part of the Basque Country.
  The main characteristic of the Basque variants of the game is the more prominent use of balls with finger-holes and hand-holes which distinguishes it from other regions in the area which prefer balls without.
context_section_description: This version is common even today in Cantabria and Biscay in the area roughly between the river Asón and the river Ibaizabal and as far south as Burgos, called pasabolo de tablón in Spanish.
  There are three parts to the playing field in this game. The first is the launching area, about 6m long, where the player takes a run to launch the ball. The ball weighs 5–7 kg and has finger and hand-holes. It the travels down a shallow groove about 8m long, the oholtzarra (cureño or tablón in Spanish). At the far end three light pins, weighing about 100g each (the lightest of all pins used in Basque bowling games) which are set in holes in the ground, one behind the other. Both the oholtzarra and the pin area are kept wet in this game to minimise friction. Not far behind the pins is a barrier (called paraboloa) to stop the ball but behind the barrier the actually target area lies, the marren zelaia "field of lines" (campo de rayas in Spanish), 20m wide and 40m long. The lines are parallel to each other and at a distance of 5m and important for scoring.
  The basic aim of the game is to hit the pins with enough force to propel them over the barrier and as far into the field as possible. Skill is needed to keep the ball in the groove and hit the pins head on, otherwise they tend to go sideways rather than forward. If a pin lands in the area up to the first line, it is worth 10 points and each additional line another 10 so the maximum score per bowl is 210 points if all land past the 6th line. In a game each player has eight balls and the highest scorer wins.
caption: Oholtzar pasaboloa
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