#kodabow

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The elk got it #kodabow #bowandarrow 🎯 (at KodaBow)

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20/365

An early post up for tonight's blog but I feel that I may indulge in a quaffage of my home brew tonight. It's a rare event to have the house to ourselves for the night, so it would be rude not to enjoy it to the full.

This morning I spent an hour practising for my first competition of the year. Due to censorship reasons I didn't go into details about the arrival of the bow earlier in the week in case I incensed anyone. I will state that the bow has been named Dashwood. It was a close run thing and Moriarty came a close second. I would like to publicly thank Chuck Matasic at Kodabow for the time and effort he has put in. I am very much looking forward to shooting Kodabow for the foreseeable future. I am however expecting a large bill for arrows as I'm beating up my practise set..... a lot.

I am listening to the new Korn album and apparently being an long time fan I'm supposed to hate it. Sorry Jonathon, it is brilliant. I didn't even know what dubstep was.

Anyway I digress. We had hoped to get over to Merrions Wood, today we finally managed it. What an absolute gem of a place; magical. Six Hundred years after being created as a deer park, (who needs Wiki), the wood has a mature crop of Beech, Oak and Chestnut. You can feel the peace as soon as you walk in. I love the detail, the extra mile that has been taken. They put in a bridge over the lake but rather than just plank it, they took the time to make it quirky. The Victorian gateposts remain at either end of the drive. Not restored in any way, just gracefully decayed and unremarkable. 

One of our first sightings was a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. I hadn't even seen one before yesterday, which means it is either following me or I have been going around with my eyes shut for years. The golf course runs alongside the wood, I caught a flash of red and realised that there was a large fox on the other side of the fairway. We stopped a while to watch it as it followed a trail of something interesting.

The steeple of St Margaret's loomed in the distance. I should imagine that it was an impressive sight back in Victorian times before the trees grew to hide its glory. One of the unexpected sights was that of a Nuthatch. We had seen a strange short tailed bird in the canopy of Merrions Wood but with the sun in our eyes we hadn't been able to identify it. On the return we spotted two more and a Kestrel. This twitching lark is getting easier.

We finished the afternoon off in the Manor Arms, well they would miss us if we didn't. Tomorrow apparently will bring snow and there has been a sighting of a Water Pippet on Ryders Hayes Mere. Well it would be rude not to pop over wouldn't it.