Country Pursuits

I am possibly the least likely person to go on a day of country pursuits, being a very urban sort. But I was kindly invited out to a day of country pursuits in Oxfordshire which, compared to day in the office, seemed really rather appealing.

We were supposed to undertake 5 activities over the day. First up was fly-fishing. Now I have never undertaken any form of fishing, and lets just say I didn't take to this like a duck to water. I was truly awful. Never really mastered the technique of casting at all. To give you an idea of how bad I was, I did actually manage to hook my cap. But so bad was I at casting I didn't get the full comedy effect of whisking it off my head.

As done by the expert

Luckily others were rather better and did actually catch some trout. One of which I took home and had for dinner Saturday night. Was delicious. I think I will leave this fishing lark to the experts though. My instructor tried to reassure me by saying he was teaching his 7 year-old to cast. I suspect I was compared unfavourably.

Nice spot though.

Next to archery. At this I have to say I fared much much better. We started off aiming at a target and then went on to woodland (or at least wooden) animals. I happily got an arrow firmly in the middle of the boar, the deer and the crocodile(!), first time in each case. Happy with that. I may not be able to survive in the woods with a fishing rod, but maybe with a bow and arrow....

Thence to racing "rage buggies". Being a non-driver I was more than a little nervous about this one, but actually wasn't too bad. I think it would be pretty hard to crash or turnover one of these, but I didn't even come close. I didn't break any speed records though.

My first 50 years of experience hadn't encompassed sheep-shearing, so here was my opportunity to put that right. This was actually quite fun, and quite easy with the help of this Kiwi bloke holding it down for us. I managed this very easily - not a nick on the old ewe, let alone clipping off a leg as I feared.

Last was another sort of buggy, but the difference here was the total lack of steering wheel. You have a throttle either side of you and and steer by pushing one further than the other. The aim is to steer round a series of slalom poles. I thought my Olympic Games experience of watching white-water canoe slalom might help. It didn't. My practice attempt at this was truly woeful, but my real run was actually ok. Just a matter of picking up the technique. I didn't do wheelies though.

To finish off, a three-course meal in the barn conversion. This sort of corporate hospitality stuff is clearly a valuable addition to normal farming. It was certainly fun. As of course is sitting down to dinner and chatting to new people about everything from the Olympics to International fraud.

And, believe it or not, more fun than pensions law.