Went to watch the UK leg of the European Horse Archery Grand Prix series this weekend. First challenge was actually finding the venue, which was the Centre of Horseback Combat Had the postcode I'd found online for them been accurate, we might not have spent most of the morning driving around tiny country lanes looking for the place.....in the end we took the only sensible course of action and repaired to a pub with wifi for lunch, got the phone number from the website and phoned them.
Having finally arrived (turns out we'd driven past it twice) and trudged along the traditional muddy tracks, we were greeted by the people who run the place telling us to keep Choccy on the lead and away from their huge (and presumably quite grumpy) Dyrewolf like dog.......
So we briskly strolled over to where the action was taking place and some nice people immediately introduced themselves and started telling us what was going on and who was who.
There were 4 teams, GB, Poland, Poland and Finland, and one of the GB guys was on the most gorgeous Haffie, you sure knew when he was coming up the run....
Spent a while talking to one of the Swedish guys (who of course spoke perfect English) about the merits of the thumb draw versus the 3 finger draw, as you do, and the NO made herself useful bossing the British team members' two small sons around and occasionally "helping" to collect arrows......
Yesterday's comp was all about the Hungarian style of archery where you have the targets up high (like Club 1 in France), we were hoping to get back today for the Korean shooting (separate targets on the ground, like for Club 2 & 3) and something called the Mamluk, which apparently involves having to shoot at targets at all sorts of different angles, including on BOTH sides of you (more on that here) but ran out of time largely due to massive traffic queues on the M25......
After Saturday's comp, Team GB were just in the lead, but they had 4 team members and the Poles in second only 3, they are amazing archers!
Some great kit on display too, love this quiver.....
Wish Hemel Hempstead wasn't so bloody far away......
Loads more photos here
1 comment:
Really good photos, Helen! You're getting on great with the new camera!
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