Archery and Orienteering with Adventure +

Ellesmere College is fortunate enough to have a wide variety of facilities, and one addition to this over recent years has been to indoor archery range. By fitting specially designed netting behind the targets and over any windows, they have been able to create a range inside an old sports hall. This morning, we decided to put this facility to good use by running an archery session for the kids on the Adventure + holiday programme.

Archery is a very complex sport when it comes to developing a consistent technique that will produce a consistent and controllable shot. However, sessions like today’s are much more about learning a few basic principles and enjoying the whole experience. As a result, after introducing everyone to the basic technique and safety rules, we just got on with shooting arrows at the target – which isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

Archery on the indoor range
Archery on the indoor range

It took a few goes, and a helpful hint or two, before everyone was hitting the target reasonably consistently, by which time a competitive edge was starting to develop. After the scored competitions, came a few games which ended up with sweet prizes for those that managed to hit particular sections of the target – skill or fluke, we’ll never know!

After lunch we took a drive out to Llanymynech, right on the Welsh border, to try our hand at orienteering. We spent half an hour or so looking at the maps and identifying what the different bits were, as well as looking at how to orientate the map and basic use of a compass. We then moved into the area I had planned to use for our little orienteering competition, to find BBC2 filming a programme about the lime kilns in the area.

We then sent them off in pairs to find specific orienteering markers, with instructions to run behind any TV cameras rather than in front of them! Unlike last week, when I took a group to Haughmond Hill,  I opted to use a star course system to help keep control of the group. This worked perfectly, and a couple of the groups did incredibly well to find lots of markers in the time we had available.

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