Yorkshire: Little Dear Woods

Little Dear Woods, Mirfield, W.Yorkshire

Our session was led by instructor Bon, a lively, passion-filled lady whom provided one of the best sessions I have had with an outdoors company in some time. She was organised, attentive to everyone’s needs and also at hand to observe your shooting technique with visual and physical demonstrations, as well as placing some funky music on as we practised on the range as to quote Bon herself “Shooting in silence is boring and you can’t dance either!” My kind of person!

We had the opportunity to shoot with traditional bows as well as a crossbow, with many practice shots later, it was competition time but not in the traditional sense. No, whilst the central gold circle is often to prize in this case, we needed to hit certain colours a certain amount of times with the aim to create an insect. A paper plate each with a large box full of colouring pens, the game began and remember until you get a body and a head, you can’t add eyes/legs/mouth because you don’t see people with floating body parts, do you?

Anyway, in the spirit of Robin Hood and Katniss Everdeen we were eager beavers, nervous too so a few of us hit the white – Someone even got one of the handles connected to the target, but sadly not worth any extra points, what?!? Accuracy got better, but like many things, practice, practice, practice and we don’t do archery enough to be any good but we had lots of fun and that’s what counts!!

Apart from the archery, we didn’t get to see much of the grounds though I managed to get a few photographs as we returned from the archery range. The woods are large, well maintained and set up for different groups, accomodating different needs and abilities. A bouldering barn, a pottery barn, a creativity building (dance, music etc), places to learn and experience bush craft as well as off site activities including climbing, kayaking, canoeing and much more.

This is a place we will definately be visiting again to sample some of the other activities on offer. If you would like to find out more information about Little Dear Woods, just click here.