So this past week we were hosted by the incredible Edwards Family, who treated us to incredible food, took us out to enjoy the English sights, and even took us out to shoot English longbows.
Ellie and her Dad are part of a English Longbow group, and the last night we were at their house, they took Jessi and I out to a field to shoot a few arrows. They've made their own bows, their own arrows, and even a few bowstrings. There are various reinactments and shooting events that try to remain historically accurate.
The Edwards were incredibly knowledgeable, from the different eras the types of arrow heads came from, to tactics longbowmen used, to how a lot of this information survived. There was a ship they pulled out of silt in the sea around England tht had a chest of bows that were perfectly preserved.
As far for our shooting, two major components that we were going for, distance and grouping. Better distance meant more time before the opposing army could come and kill you, and grouping means putting arrows roughly in the same place, so that whole battalions of archers could drop hundreds of arrows onto a small target. In many cases, I remarked it was like golf, in that consistency is key. I had fairly good distance for just picking up a bow, apparently, and Jessi had nice lines and groups of arrows.
Shooting English longbows in England, certainly one of the most authentic and awesome experiances of the trip thusfar.
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