Crowthorne Nationals Shoot Report 25th July 2010

It was that time of year again late July with the typical English weather and time for the Crowthorne Nationals. As usual it was to be held at Edgebarrow School in Crowthorne. As usual I would be shooting the New National, with my light longbow, but John would be shooting the Junior National this year. In addition to make up our longbow team, in the hope of retaining the cup, was Will shooting a Short Junior National.

With the weather fine but cloudy, nice to have a bit of cloud cover, as seems to be usual these days I have been doing more Field Shooting than target so it was going to be fun getting back into shooting at a target 100 yards away and I soon began to regret not brining the Warbow.

This year I would be shooting with Colin Young (same a last year), Martin Bale, Grant Ballentine (Junior after the free Junior New National record) and Phil Warnes who was shooting Barebow. With 4 longbow archers and a barebow we could all shoot all our arrows and have a cup of tea before the target next to us had finished their first 3.


We started with sighter's at 09:45 and then, as usual with a longbow, continued with the shoring sighter's at 10:00. With all of taking a couple of ends to get our eye in, Martin quicker than the rest, Marting quickly took thelead at 100 yards whilst, as with last year, Colin and I traded second place. Having completed the 4 dozen arrows at 100 it was time for a quick tea break whilst the targets were repositioned before we returned for 2 dozen at 80 yard. I don't know what happened over that tea break but on returning to the shooting line no one in our group seemed capable of hitting the target. Over 2 dozen Martin only managed about 3 hits whilst Colin and I did not do much better. At the conclusion of the the mornings shooting the 3 gents longbows had all managed a bowman score and I was in third just behind Colin.

Lunch of home made burgers was hopefully going to set me up for the afternoon and Shirley had kindly arranged a show by the Red Arrows, although they were a bit far south and managed to most of it over Farnborough Airfield, was a good way to concluded the mornings shooting.

At 14:30 it was time to shoot our second New National of the day and little did we know how bad the afternoon was going to be. Over lunch the humidity had stared to build and as we all know changes in temperature and humidity can have some very undesirable effects on a longbow archer and his equipment. Although, because we were shooting a double round, we were not allowed sighter's this was not going to be a problem. or so we all thought, because we new where we were aiming after the mornings shooting. This was to prove a fatal flaw for all of us because the general change in the weather conditions meant all our arrows started dropping short but trying to work out where the arrows have landed whilst on the line was difficult, to say the least, and it took us all a few ends before we started scoring more consistently. This continue one we had switched to 80 yards although we all shot better on 80 than we did in the morning. The net result was that by the end of the afternoons shooting we were all down on the morning score with Colin and Martin down around 30-40 point I managed to get the closest being only 4 down.

After another excellent days shooting, well not the scores, at the Crowthorne Nationals it was time for the awards. Martin won the Gents New National Longbow Gold whilst I came Second. Unfortunately we failed to retain the Longbow team trophy but John did managed to win the Closest to the centre longbow trophy in addition to his gold.