This years Open competition was attended by 77 archers. Temperatures soared to well over 30 degrees, with the heat trapped in the bowl of the Warren.  The woods were not available this year so shade was scarce, leaving archers huddling around the course in the small patches of shade they could find - but this didn’t stop the good humour and good shooting.  The “Turner downhill challenge” was introduced on the 60m steep downhill shot – and three archers exceeded the current records:  Alex Newnes (AFB) scored 13, Eleanor Piper (recurve) scored 16 and Malcom Rees (Compound UL) scored the maximum 18!

Lord Paramount William Hastings-Bass, the 17^th Earl of Huntingdon gave a short speech and presented the competition medals and the...

The “All British” is attended by the best archers from all corners of the United Kingdom; England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This year’s event was hosted by Overton Black Arrows at their field course in the North Wessex Downs AONB, near the village of Kingsclere in Hampshire.

The courses set out on the “Warren, Coombe & Peter Hastings Memorial Woods” are well known to be some of the most challenging in the UK and this years was no exception.  One competitor measured walking more than 15 miles and climbing the equivalent of a 120 storey building over the two days.  Shots varied from an extremely steep 60m downhill onto an 80cm target to 5m ‘bunnies’ – triple 20cm target faces.

The competition ran for tw...

You have heard about the event....probably helped....but what about the club members that shot it?

The All British is attended by the best Archers from the four corners of the United Kingdom.  Archers shoot in many categories and there is also a team event:  England v Wales v Scotland v N. Ireland

We had four archers shooting in the competition:

Richard, Steve & Jodie shot recurve; Saturday an unmarked course of 24 targets, Sunday a marked course of 24

Bill shot barebow; Saturday the marked course of 24 targets, Sunday the unmarked course of 24

Come to the venue and you'll see the sort of shots they had to cope with!!

Results as follows

Gents Barebow

    Bill Jones:  17th after day 1, and 16th (out of 24) overall w...

Quite a lot to say about this one...

The club can be exceptionally proud of the event that we hosted this weekend.  In total we had 140 archers, 7 judges, 17 club members and of course our caterers, sponsors and spectators - so around 200 people.

We have been planning the event since February, since agreeing to host it in November last year.  Many people have helped to plan and build the course and prepare the venue and then provide support on the day:

• Peter, Maurice, Jo, Steve, Geoff, Ian, Kosila, Mark, Susie, John, Rob C, Rob A, Peter, Gary, Terry, Alex, Bill, Richard, Brian, Gerald, Hazel...sorry if I missed anyone...!

We held a have-a-go session in Oakley as we have for the last two years,  In attendance were:

• Steve, Susie, John, Richard, Jodie, Mark (sorry if I've forgotten someone)

Richard, Jodie, Steve and Alex went up to Lilleshall this week.  Alex and Jodie had won their in their class at the summer metric competiition in 2017.  The prize was a coaching session with a UK level coach.

We left at 6am, to arrive just before 9am at Lilleshall.  Their coach was Lloyd Brown - AGB, Coaching Development manager.  The session was fantastic - Lloyd started by saying that he couldn't coach them in a conventional way, as this was a single session - so he wanted to teach them some vital aspects of archery, so that they could go home and work to become better archers.

The lessons were very informative - and could help us all - I'll do my best to paraphrase...

1.  Posture.

The kids worked in front of mirrors ...