The Grand Match, also called The Bonspiel, is an outdoor curling

Curling

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a...

 tournament, or bonspiel

Bonspiel

A bonspiel is a curling tournament, traditionally held outdoors on a frozen freshwater loch. The word comes from the Scottish Gaelic and means league match . Though not mandatory, curling teams involved in bonspiels often wear theme costumes...

, held most recently on the Lake of Menteith

Lake of Menteith

The Lake of Menteith , is a loch in Scotland, located on the Carse of Stirling, the flood plain of the upper reaches of the rivers Forth and Teith, upstream of Stirling. Until the early 19th century, the more usual Scottish name of Loch of Menteith was used...

 in Stirling

Stirling (council area)

Stirling is one of the 32 unitary local government council areas of Scotland, and has a population of about 87,000 . It was created under the Local Government etc Act 1994 with the boundaries of the Stirling district of the former Central local government region, and it covers most of the former...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 when the weather is cold enough. Traditionally it is a match between the north and south of Scotland.

The last tournament was held in 1979. From then until 2010, a loch

Loch

Loch is the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word for a lake or a sea inlet. It has been anglicised as lough, although this is pronounced the same way as loch. Some lochs could also be called a firth, fjord, estuary, strait or bay...

 never froze to the required depth of seven inches of ice to allow the tournament to take place.