Here at Activity HQ we’re full time adrenaline addicts, so when we got the chance to master the art of archery on Easter Sunday, we polished off the last of our Easter eggs and headed straight for the target range at Archery Durham.
For the inside scoop on all the day’s action we caught up with our resident Robin Hood, Mike..
“Over the past 10 years I’ve tried most of our activities, but I’ve never got round to giving archery a go, so I couldn’t wait to finally try it.
We arrived at our Durham Archery venue fairly early, which meant we had time to squeeze in a bacon butty before our experience, and if you’ve got time I’d definitely recommend visiting the on-site café for a bite to eat.
After our butty break we made our way to the archery range where we were met by an instructor, who gave us a full safety briefing and taught us how to use the bows. Mastering the basics was fairly easy and thanks to the instructor we all knew exactly what we were meant to do – putting his advice into practice and hitting the target was another thing entirely though..
With a bit of practice it wasn’t long before we were all hitting the target, and I could definitely see an improvement because my arrows were getting closer and closer to the centre of the target. The best advice I could give is to relax, I just closed my eyes and imagined I was Robin Hood or The Arrow, and that somehow seemed to work – it’s probably best to open your eyes before firing though!
Overall the experience was really good, but what really made it for me was when the instructor decided to run a bit of a competition between us all. We’re all fairly competitive anyway, so when we got the chance to take part in a shot-off things got really interesting. It turns out watching The Arrow doesn’t automatically turn you into a master archer, but I still managed to come third which I was pretty chuffed with to say it was my first time. I was definitely a lot better than I expected.
The only thing I can really compare archery to is axe throwing or clay pigeon shooting. If you’ve tried either activity you’ll know there’s quite a bit of skill involved, and you need plenty of patience to hit the target – archery’s exactly the same. If you rush your shot you nearly always miss, but that’s all part of the fun if you’re a beginner.
Would I try archery again? Hell yeah!”
If the teams’ trip to the archery range has inspired you to grab a bow and take on the targets, we visited Archery Durham and sampled the 1 hour Archery Action package, which we can’t recommend enough! And before we sign off we’d just like to say a huge thank you to everybody at Archery Durham for an awesome day.