GP2 Tawd Vale

With this ground being some 240 miles from Southampton a weekend away for me this time. Good job to with a total of 6.5 hours of driving just to get to the Wigan area where I was staying.

After a day of visiting places on the Saturday I bumped into 2 shooters from the SEFTA region staying at the same location in the pub next door. So I joined Dan Eley and Dave Croucher for evening dinner and a few beers before calling it a night. As they were shooting in the morning session they did not join me for breakfast at 8am, a champion breakfast if I may say so myself.

So after being fed and set for the day I headed out for the short 20 minute drive to the ground.

The ground itself is run by the Scout Movement and the club uses a small corner of it. The club uses an area of the woodland near the entrance with a container acting as the club house that had a small stream meandering about 5yds in front of it. The area they use is quite clear of undergrowth, so any breeze would blow through and at one end there is a small slope that ended in a quite open clearing.

The course itself started on the left side of the container on the other side of the stream where the first 2 lanes had the targets deep into the undergrowth. With a short walk up the slope to 2 lanes that headed down to more open area of the undergrowth Here was the first of the positional lanes, a pair of kneelers in which one was had a 25mm reducer. |Lane 5 had the targets across the clearing with one quite high up a tree and near max distance.

Then you head back towards where the path came up the slope to a group of 5 lanes that ran down the slope, with targets at different angles and heights. These targets were in the opposite direction to the first to lanes, so you needed to keep on your toes for the wind. Lane 6 at the top of the slope was a standing lane with another reducer here. Definitely racking up the difficulty factor for the courses.

Once at the bottom of the slope and in front of the container, the course sort of followed the stream with targets changing direction slowly until about lane 18 when the targets were now running at right angles to the ones at the slope.

For those in the afternoon the yellow coloured faceplates started to become difficult with the sun breaking through the trees and disguising them in places.