Adventures with Peppa Pig, and the Chris Farr Memorial Shoot

It's been a busy weekend!

On Saturday, we had to clear the attic of all the detritus and general junk that we have accumulated in the years since moving in (and a lot of stuff that went straight up there when we moved in!) as we are having loft insulation and draught proofing installed by the energy company on Monday. This was a bit of a trial, but my wife decided she wanted to do it as she has a kids enthusiasm for going up in the attic, and since she is small enough to stand up without having to bend over - I gallantly decided to let her get on with it and she did an absolutely sterling job of clearing it down - go you!

In the afternoon then after we were all cleaned up, Erin's grandparent's took her for a few hours so we could take Daniel to Peppa Pigs Treasure Hunt in St David's Hall! He absolutely loved it! He was shouting along with the puppets and actors, singing the songs and laughing his head off at the jokes, it went down an absolute treat and he loves his Peppa Pig book and light spinner we got him there :)

Today was the second round of the Chris Farr Memorial Shoot at my home club, Pentref Bowmen so I went up there to shoot the 24 target Marked round. The weather was absolutely was absolutely atrocious! Driven rain and VERY high wind all night beforehand bringing down trees and sending wheelie bins for a walk down the road... ours went down the stairs upside down and tried to escape, the broken gate luckily jamming itself in the way!

I'm surprised the shoot went ahead at all but given the conditions, the top half of our course was impassable and so they hurriedly redesigned it to a 12 target course and we shot that instead. It was my first time shooting Compound in the rain and I wanted to keep as much rain off my scope as possible, cue some redneck engineering - MacGuyver style with scissors, a pop bottle and some elastic bands to make a scope hood!

Despite the awful weather, I did fairly well as it happens. The changes in my form and grip I put into practice recently paid off and I finished on a 153 with all arrows hits. I've only ever done one FITA field round before this one and it was in nice conditions, and the best half was 154 so the improvements I've made in the months since are apparent if I can shoot that kind of score in such bad conditions. Make no mistake, I am not exaggerating at all - today was by far the worst condition I have ever shot in, and some of the worst weather I have ever been outside in. My score was in the same kind of area as a lot of the really experienced compounders, so I was very happy with the end result and I am improving steadily.

I'm looking forward to my next field shoot where I can put these improvements into practice on a full 24 target course in hopefully halfway decent weather!

Well, where to start... I suppose the beginning is as good a place as any!

I'm Neil, father of 2 amazing kids Daniel and Erin and husband of the most caring and loving wife in the world - Paula. I'm an average joe kinda guy but I do have some pretty strange quirks! For one, I like juggling and poi spinning (fire poi too!), and have tried my hand at unicycle at open evenings with the NoFitState Circus. I'm also a minimalist, sometimes barefoot runner and when i'm not barefoot, I live in some pretty strange shoes called Vibram FiveFingers which have seperate toes and no padding/heel so it feels like you are barefoot. I'm well known for these and for being a bit of a hippy/alternative, they've become part of my personality and people react in shock if I'm seen in normal shoes now! We all love being outside and go camping/hiking as much as possible and go on trips to various educational places quite often, such as museums, caves, national parks etc and get cabin fever if we haven't gone out somewhere on a day off!

As you can probably tell from the title of the blog - my main hobby, sport and passion is archery.I've been tempted to start a blog for a long time now as I always come back from a competition, or a night tinkering with my bow up the club and think the days findings would make a good post, so here we are! Archery will be the main focus of my blog but there will be other topics touched on as we go but i'll start with a bit of history on how I got started.

I've always enjoyed shooting, and have shot air rifles and airsoft guns (plastic BB) for many years since my early teens, and toyed around  with some cheap plastic bows when I was younger. I'd fancied trying archery properly but never really looked into it with any effort. In 2006 my wife and I went on holiday to Bulgaria and there was an archery 'have-a-go' on the beach opposite the hotel where it was 1 lev (about 30p at the time) for 6 arrows. I noticed they had some bows I had never seen before with all manner of strange bits attached to them which I now know as stabilisers and sights and had to try them out! With a bit of brief safety instruction, I loosed my first arrow and I was hooked! I absolutely loved it and kept going back to the guy constantly and had a great time shooting the different types of bow he had.

As soon as we got back to the UK, I checked the net and found my archery club nearby, Pentref Bowmen. I signed up for the beginners course, completed it, joined and bought my first bow - a wooden trainer recurve with a plastic sight and i've never looked back! I tried the Barebow style briefly but enjoyed shooting with a sight more, so stuck with that and gradually upgraded my equipment and began to advance in my ability and skill. I shot for Wales in the European Field Archery Championships and ranked 14th in Recurve in 2009, and joined the Glamorgan Archery Squad in early 2010 and shot with them competitively for a year before deciding to take a bit of time out from competitions. I moved to traditional archery and shot a Korean bow with a thumbring style draw for about a year to relax, but before long the itch to play with something technical was overwhelming and I decided to go to the dark side and buy a Compound bow...

I've had a bit of a love affair with the Bowtech Guardian since I saw one and shot it in 2008, and I had the offer of a black marble one for an excellent price on the archery forum I frequent. I couldn't resist so I drummed up the funds and treated myself! This is the bow  I am shooting in the background photo of the blog. She is an absolute beast, very fast and accurate and i've been shooting compound for about 6 months now. In those months I have advanced quite well and found the bowstyle that seems to suit me the most! I have only shot a few competitions so far but am already seeing successes, on my first competition with it I scored 297/300, only missing out on 3rd place by 5 x's. Since then I have taken 2 silver medals at indoor shoots, and a 3rd place at my last Field shoot so it's going quite well!

My next competition is this weekend. It's a 2 day shoot but I can only make the Sunday, so I won't place no matter how well I shoot but I can still take a classification score from the round, I only hope the weather is on our side! It's meant to be awful with heavy rain forecast all day but shooting in the rain doesn't bother me, i've been there before and have good quality waterproofs for it! This will  only be my 2nd FITA field round since switching to Compound. On my last one, my goal was to break 300 points and I scored 297 which was dissapointing. I've made lots of changes so hope to break that barrier and start climbing, but this is a marked 24 round which is considered harder than the mixed round I shot 297 on, and the weather may be against us so we will see what happens... wish me luck!