Richard's Dairy....Lea Valley Shooting Association

This week's leg of my tour took me to Lea Valley Shooting Ground in Hertford on Thursday 3rd May. It was cold, grey day but thankfully the rain stopped for a few hours (hooray) and I was able to meet with Alex Mitchell & Ken Rist who run the ground, without resorting to waders!!

Lea Valley is a CPSA Registered Ground and has been established since 1970. They offer clay shooting to suit virtually all tastes with an English Sporting layout, 2 Compak Layouts & a FITASC, DTL, ABT & English Skeet.

They run a Shooting School from Tuesday to Saturday 10am - 4pm where you can have 1-1 lessons with  their CPSA qualified Instructors and perhaps enjoy a corporate or group event. The Club shoots every Thursday evening from May onwards from 5pm - 8pm and every third Sunday from 10am -1pm when they run their Club competition. The competition is based on a points accumulation sytem whereby a win gets you 5pts and second place 3pts and 8pts gets you a free round of Skeet and 20 points gets you a free round of Sporting.

There is also an Air Gun Club with over 200 members situated within the ground who operate every Saturday and occassional Sundays.

Membership at Lea Valley costs £80 per year and gets you the usual discounts at the desk on your shooting. They currently have a membership of over 200 and 3 new members joined whilst I was there which is great !

They are signed up for National Shooting Week again this year (2nd - 10th June) so do contact the Club to see about having a go at clay shooting if you know someone who is keen to try. You never know, there might be another young Digweed or Faulds out there....

The Club does run Have a Go days most Saturday's costing £25 for 20 clays & cartridges, all safety equipment, a gun and a qualified Instructor to get you hitting those clays quickly and safely. £35 gets you 30 clays and cartridges etc but includes a 10 bird competition and a trophy for the top shot.

On a seperate note, I was very interested to hear that they guys are currently coaching a blind chap to shoot clays and he is thoroughly enjoying it. I'm hoping to get an interview soon to learn more about this remarkable story so keep checking the CPSA website for more....

In the meantime, I would really like to thank Alex & Ken for their time and hospitility. Take a look at their website www.lvsa.org.uk for more info on this friendly ground. They sorted me out with some chaps to shoot with and I hit 50/70 on the Sporting which was okay but a slightly more respectable 18/25 on their Compak layout which as some of you already know is not my favourite discipline!!!

Look out for my blogs on Purbeck Shooting Ground & Southern Counties which I'm visiting next week.