The Mitchells Grievson team continued the run of successfully achieving goals and were rewarded with a team building day. We wanted to mix it up and do something different and decided that Clay Pigeon Shooting and Archery would be fun.
Claire, booked the activities with The North East Outdoor Pursuits Centre who are based at Castlewood Farm, near Tow Law. The guys there are great fun and it's well worth a trip if you fancy trying something different. They also do paint balling which sounds fun good but decided 'not to go there' for health and safety reasons!
Director, Phil was a self-claimed semi-professional archer and clay pigeon shooter. The whole team were expecting big things from our leader and let's just say 'a good workman never blames his tools'.
First up was archery, with James peppering the centre ring for 10 point scores in the warm up but he peaked a bit early. Sol was very sharp on the speed test, popping balloons in record times. Jane had sheep in the neighbouring fields running for cover and Charlotte who was only sporting one contact lense cracked it by using her 'bad eye' after hitting Daniela's neighbouring targets. We held a competition in the end with Andrew taking the spoils in a very close-run battle with Sarah of Sherwood Forest.
Next up was Clay Pigeon Shooting and just for the benefit of an unnamed staff members wife 'Clay Pigeon' is not a breed of pigeon but a saucer-shaped piece of baked clay which is thrown up in the air from a trap as a target for shooting. Therefore, we are happy to confirm no pigeons or other birds for that matter were harmed!!
They have 2 shooting ranges, so we were all split into 2 teams. Both teams would practice shooting first to learn the basics with a competition at the end. Again, the team at North East Outdoor Pursuits Centre were really good at giving tips and hints to improve and everyone was hitting at least some of the clay pigeons.
Sharp shooting Rachel, Helen and Claire were naturals. Sylwia W was effective with her rocket launcher style technique and Sylwia P did really well too. Lesley was slightly impaired by her poorly shoulder but thankfully she didn't mention it all day (she did). Slow starting Sol showed an impressive display of shooting hitting 8 clays in a row. Phil, who wished he bought his own gun was struggling by his high standards blaming 'the cartridge size' of all things!!
Anyway, Andrew “I don't like to mention it” Park also won the clay pigeon shooting. There were allegations of sneaky practice sessions as he seemed to be on first name terms with the staff from The North East Outdoor Pursuits Centre but this was neither confirmed nor denied.
We finished the day with a lovely meal at The Coppermine in Crook and a superb day was had by all!!
