East Devon and a round trip of 384 miles for us on this one with 3 ½ hours drive each way…..its going to be a long day and a very hot one with temperatures set to reach low thirties, ouch.!
On arrival the temperature was already in the high twenties with a light wind, not enough to cool the body but certainly plenty to take you off target as we soon found out on the plinking range. We signed in and walked the course as per norm with me starting lane 1, cool I thought I like the sound of lane 1, this was short lived to find it was a standing lane.! this was not going to start well what with first lane nerves and standing with no doubt an audience. As we moved along the course out of the shelter from the trees is just seemed to get even hotter than we had arrived, it was now just silly no cover full sun. The course looked very good, mixed long plus short shots and kind of clearable if you could hold on to the wind direction. Good scores were coming off course with Justin Wood scoring 49/50 being top am session shooter.
Time to start after a short safety briefing, lane 1 here we come. Normally I do elect to start first but this time I was told I’m last out of the three of us, Andrew Slade first as he was doing open class Paul Mangham went second and me third. Lane 1 started good with the first target down target two however got the better of me with me shooting high 12 O’clock good for wind and a nice indicator for the next lane and it takes the pressure off for a clearance eh.?
I should be so lucky.
As we jumped for lane to lane I wasn’t doing too bad at all even though the heat was increasing throughout the afternoon only dropping 10 overall. At one point I thought I was going to beat my personal best of 43 until I blew it on lane 21 or 22 double dink.!
I got to say thank you to whoever it was from East Devon club who served out up and down the lanes bottled water, nice touch and much welcomed thank you.
Also thank you to Andrew Slade and poor Paul Mangham who had a nightmare of a day, been there Paul I knew the pain.
So now its all down on the last event at Anston for Grand Prix 7 and presentations, a couple of the grades are already won but second and third places to battle for in the grades.
If your an Andriod user and cannot watch the above video click here
| AA | ||
| 1st | Justin Wood | 49 |
| 2nd | Jack Harris | 48 |
| 3rd | James Osborne | 48 |
| A | ||
| 1st | Andy Williams | 46 |
| 2nd | Ian Stoddart | 45 |
| 3rd | David Mitchell | 45 |
| B | ||
| 1st | Joshua Vaughan | 46 |
| 2nd | Graham Fleeman | 43 |
| 3rd | Paul Macher | 42 |
| C | ||
| 1st | Mark Rogers | 39 |
| 2nd | Darren Hillier | 39 |
| 3rd | Paul Gallagher | 39 |
| Piston | ||
| 1st | Brian Samson | 43 |
| 2nd | Phil Hollis | 41 |
| 3rd | Stephen Privett | 38 |
| Open | ||
| 1st | Ian Challis | 47 |
| 2nd | Tony fouracres | 44 |
| 3rd | Barry McGraw | 43 |