Some facts and photos.

The highest score for the Belsay Castle Round was shot by Ken Turner at the very first competition in 1996. His score was 422 and no-one else has managed to score over 400.

The first 10 years  -  for a list of the winners and their scores please click here

    In the year 2000 we were invited to extend the tournament to 2 days and a talented club member, Peter Marshall donated 2 trophies. The Belsay Shield, featuring a painting of Belsay Castle in the thirteenth century,  is presented to the overall winner; and the Peter Marshall Trophy, a polished horn mounted on a plinth, presented to  the Ponteland Archer with the greatest number of golds.  Also for this Millenium year  archers were invited to dress in medieval costume.

In 2003 Betty Wylie was the first lady to win the Belsay Shield.

The weather.  All the competitions have been held at the end of June so the weather has been very variable but the first tournament was perfect.  The blazon targets disintegrated one wet year and a couple of times it was almost too hot to shoot. In 2004 the Saturday was wet so many archers did not shoot on the Sunday which was a lovely day.

One year we had to keep chasing the sheep away from the targets and of course there is always the problem of arrows which landed in the green or rather the brown!  The year of the foot and mouth disease the grass was not grazed and even after cutting and raking it was very long.  That was one of the hot years too.

Apart from 2004 we have always put up an exhibition of archery and run a have-a-go.  These have proved very popular, some members have become quite hoarse giving lectures on the history of archery and we have even being asked to make strings for the competitors.

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