Archery
Archived posts from this Category
Tuesday, 17th May 2011
Posted by Judith on 18 May 2011 | Tagged as: Archery, Work
It was all go today, with early appointments, then squeezing an archery session in, before I spent the afternoon in a meeting. Geoff came home to do some programming work to update our online shop, hoping he could go out hang gliding later. It wasn’t to be. It was still windy at 7pm and the daylight was so low we had to turn the lights on.
Thursday, 12th May 2011
Posted by Geoff on 12 May 2011 | Tagged as: Archery
Geoff writes: wet and windy in the morning, but the sun came out in the afternoon and we went off to do some archery. Too windy to paraglide, it dropped off a little and became hang glidable. I did go up in the evening, but it was very cold in the strong wind, and I just couldn’t be bothered. Three hang gliders did fly though, and seemed to have a nice time.
Tomorrow the North South Cup starts. It’s based at the Mynd, but for Friday the forecast is better further south and east, so they are doing the 127 mile drive to Milk Hill, in the hope of getting a decent XC day. The option here is Clatter – a good XC site, but the poor weather, the cloud, will arrive here much sooner than at Milk Hill, so they’ve probably made the right decision. RASP is giving it very thermic there, but then our experience of RASP forecasting of thermal strength for this area at least, this year, has been very bad, with it usually wildly over estimating the thermal activity.
Friday, 6th May 2011
Posted by Judith on 07 May 2011 | Tagged as: Archery, Work
Another windy day with occasional showers forecast. These didn’t materialise until the evening, and if we hadn’t been working, Geoff could probably have had a hang gliding flight. Instead we had work meetings. It’s at this time of year when we sit down and map out the work year, planning times and dates of conferences and looking at what other work committments we want to undertake. By 3.30pm, we’d had enough of meetings and went outside into the sunshine to do some gardening, including finding a suitable tree limb for the groovy hammock chair my parents gave us a few years ago for Christmas.
After that we went to archery. I need to do a lot of work on my shoulder muscles…
The demise of the open mic night at the Bridges has left a big gap in our weekly social calendar, so I had a peek at the 31 Days in Shropshire website to see if we could see some of our favourite local bands elsewhere. To my delight, Blues Boy Dan was playing in Marton, so we went along to see him. We assumed that he would either start a bit late or that he would do two sets with a break in between, but he had started promptly at 8pm, so we missed nearly all of his songs. Still, he’s playing some other gigs in the area soon, so we’ll make the effort to arrive on time. He did do one of my favourites though… the Dirty Dishes song.
“There’s too many dirty dishes in the sink for just us two … Well you got me wonderin’ baby who’s makin’ dirty dishes with you …”
Thursday, 28th April 2011
Posted by Geoff on 29 Apr 2011 | Tagged as: Archery, Trying, but failing, to fly
Geoff writes: A sunny day, but a little windy. Also totally blue, with the usual, now permanent, inversion. We did half heartedly go up to Corndon, where it was sort of flyable, if a little windy. A few people were there, but, being Corndon, in spite of the wind they were getting no height at all. After sitting in the car for a while, and chatting to various people, we decided to can it, went home, picked up the archery stuff, and went to do some shooting. Very pleasant, and infinitely better than another frustrating day on Corndon.
There is a shoot there on Friday, for the royal wedding. I’m assuming it’s to celebrate the wedding, rather than have their faces painted on the targets, so I guess we won’t bother going. Amazing how many people fall for this sycophantic rubbish. I never cease to be amazed at how so many people can be so gullible. It’s very sad – people’s brains have so much potential, and yet they are used so little.
Saturday, 23rd April 2011
Posted by Judith on 23 Apr 2011 | Tagged as: Archery, Trying, but failing, to fly
The forecast for today was all over the place in terms of wind and we had considered going up to the Peaks, but a chat with others had us decide against it. Too much chance of thunderstorms and if you went XC, you’d probably just fly into the front anyway.
Here the forecast changed and started to indicate that it would be west in the afternoon, so we decided to go to archery for the first time this year and then try to fly later. Given that we would still be in the same (crap) airmass as we have been for the whole week, I wasn’t too optimistic. Driving over the Long Mynd to the archery club in Stretton the wind was north, but very light, with the usual haze. What we didn’t know was that there was a longbow competition at the club, so no shooting for us with recurve bows. They did encourage us to have a go though and we were lent a couple of bows by the very nice Rupert.
It’s very different from shooting recurve. You don’t have a sight, have to balance the arrow on your knuckle and I found it harder to pull than our more flexible bows. Still, it’s a far more pure form of archery and it was really great to get a chance to have a go. All the longbow men hoped they had couple of recruits to the other side, but I’ll need to have another go before I comsider investing in another bow. I did find it a bit distressing though to shoot at a target with moles on it!
By 1pm, we couldn’t stand the sky any more and left to see if the wind had turned west. Much to our amazement, it had gone strongish east, so we went home to do some gardening and wait to see what would happen. Viv and Phil were at Corndon and reported the wind on and soarable, but they didn’t fancy it without any locals around. It was a good call. We heard the first clap of thunder about 45 minutes later, coming from the direction of Corndon. It stormed/rained from then until after 6pm.
Tuesday, 28th September 2010
Posted by Judith on 28 Sep 2010 | Tagged as: Archery
Just the other day in the pub we were talking about our attitude just before we change country, since I was saying that my heart wasn’t really in the flying here any more. It comes to a point when we really look forward to being in the other country, be that Spain or the UK. Another feature of our behaviour at these times is that we get quite cautious. I always start flying really conservatively about 3 weeks before coming back to the UK because I don’t want to have an accident that will mess up the season/summer. Likewise, I don’t want to mess up the skiing and nice autumn flying with a daft injury here. So it’s a bit of a superstition thing…
We cleaned most of the day, but one of our last jobs was to return the set of arrows Geoff had borrowed from the club. Whilst there, it seemed only fitting that we had a last shoot, despite the chilliness and gloom. On the third end (six arrows), I shot and my arrow bounced off the target, but made a horrible twanging noise on the way. Once we walked up to the boss (the target), we saw the state of one of his borrowed arrows… I had shot into the end of it and smashed it completely. So instead of giving back 8 perfect arrows we had to go and give a grovelling apology to one of the club guys. And then the new car started making funny noises. Whatever next?
Thursday, 16th September 2010
Posted by Judith on 16 Sep 2010 | Tagged as: Archery, Trying, but failing, to fly, Work
More work, more bad weather. By the afternoon the weather had improved and hang gliders started to fly on the Long Mynd. We decided to head up there, taking all the toys with us so we had some flexibility. Once on the hill, we could see big showers around, so we didn’t even stop, but headed on down to the archery field in Stretton. As soon as we arrived the heavens opened and we had to shelter in the club house.
The archery session was good, but Geoff’s hang glider has to stay out for the night to dry off.