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Published: 18 July 2007

It all sounds very innocuous; Watership Down, Bunnies, The Warren, beautiful views and great countryside but like the book, there is a dark side! What am I talking about? Last weekend saw the annual Watership Down Field Archery Tournament put on by Peter Turner and members of Overton Black Arrows with the help of some friends from Wales. The views are fantastic but to see them you have to clamber up some steep slopes. After catching your breath back (no oxygen was provided) and taking a peep at the view it was time to shoot your three arrows at a target some distance below you before tumbling back down the slope to record the scores. You then scramble to your next shooting peg avoiding the holes that the rabbits had dug (I knew there was a reason for calling it The Warren!) and then you shoot back up the hill to another target. Repeat this for two days in high temperatures and equally high humidity and you can understand why I think there should be a new archery discipline - Extreme Archery.

There were some archers competing who seemed to know what they were doing, these were people whose names you read about in archery magazines. A few of them were heard to say that they considered"The Warren" to be one of the most difficult field courses in the UK. The course took you past a refreshment tent on several occasions where Betty from Ravens and her helpers did their best to stoke up our carbohydrate intake before sending us back into The Warren. Talking of the refreshment tent, target number 7 was close by. It was different to the rest of the targets in that it was almost on flat ground but the scary thing about it was that each time I shot on it my arrows were mystically drawn into the ground by some dark force. I am sure it was put there for the entertainment of the judges while they were supping their tea. Peter Turner laid on a refreshing shower about three targets from the end of the shoot. I was shooting at the time and the rain was so hard that I could feel the vibrations from the rain drops hitting the long rod. There is not a lot of shelter in The Warren so as you can imagine, things were a little moist after that! Still, we only had the last uphill 55mtr 45deg shot to do and after hauling ourselves up to score it was all downhill from then on. Would I do it again? You bet, it was a great weekend and I couldn't have spent it with a friendlier group of archers. Why don't you give Extreme Archery a try next year?

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Published: 18 July 2007

EARLY ANNOUNCEMENT OF IMPORTANT AND EXCITING NEWS (Especially for Compound archers) FROM THE ENGLISH ARCHERY FEDERATION The English Archery Federation (EAF) has been awarded substantial funding from Sport England to provide a development program for a group of top performing compound archers to undertake training towards competing in the Commonwealth Games in 2010. The Games are scheduled to take place in India in November 2010. The programme for this will require commitment from the archers selected to undertake training and competition (international and home events), similar to that for recurve archers under the GNAS World Class Performance plan, over the next two and a half years. The places on the programme will be subject to continued performance achievement throughout this period and substitutions may be made if appropriate. Selection of the final team members to compete in The Games will be made nearer the time. All compound archers who reach the qualification score will be eligible, and selection will be made at a later date (following the end of the summer outdoor tournament season) when all applications are received. Training is intended to start over the winter months. This is an early notification. Sport England has advised EAF by telephone that our application has been successful. As soon as the formal written confirmation and conditions are received from Sport England further details will be published and placed on the English Archery Federation website: www.englisharcheryfederation.org EAF has established a sub-committee which submitted the bid and will manage the programme, the members are: Les Smeeton (chairman). EMAS, Ted Burnham. SCAS and Dave Harris. WMAS This is great news for Compound archers we believe this is the first time that governmental funding has been granted for compounds. Would you please be kind enough to inform all secretaries in your counties by sending on this document and ask them to forward this information in turn to all clubs in their area so that archers can be prepared! Information prepared 05/07/2007

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Published: 09 July 2007

Amanda, David and Michael travelled up to the National Sports Centre at Lilleshall over the weekend to compete in the Junior FITA Star and Junior National Championships and performed very well. David Collier - 6th place in the Metric 1 and 8th place in the Bristol 1 Michael Hopkins - 5th place in the Metric 3 and 6th place in the Bristol 3 Amanda Collier - 6th place in the Bristol 3 You might be interested to know that Mathew Cole, the winner of this years Gulliver Bursary, finished in 1st place in the Bristol 1 round on the Championship day. A full list of results can be found here.

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Published: 11 June 2007

It has been a busy week with visits from the golfers on Wednesday, Thames Valley Advanced Motorcyclists on Saturday and the Friendship Shoot on Sunday and the weather was fantastic for each event. Even the Red Arrows made (very) brief flying visit on Saturday.

Not bad form for a golfer! We had a Gold Sweep on the bikers day which was won by Keith who kindly handed the £10 to Dirty Dave as a donation to the Air Ambulance.

There were some very impressive machines parked on the field

but I think Irene was more impressed by the leathers!