In the first week of the Easter Holidays, the Rifle Club enjoyed its first Easter Training week, at Bisley, since 2019. In total, 18 members of the team, along with five members of staff, headed to Bisley for the week. Six pupils had already travelled to Bisley the previous day and were taking part in ‘Maple Taste’, a training/selection weekend for forthcoming GB Cadet Rifle team tours. Hannah B and Georgie C were both training with the British Cadet Rifle Team ahead of their three week tour to Canada in August and Georgie B, Louis H C, Harry P and Jonny W were all hoping for selection to the UK Cadet Rifle Team for their ten day tour to the Channel Islands, also in August. By the end of the Rifle Clubs week at Bisley, the UKCRT team selection had been announced and both Louis and Harry had been successful and unfortunately Georgie and Jonny narrowly missed out on selection. Many congratulations to both Louis and Harry.

After their weekend with the GB Cadet training, the six pupils then joined the rest of the Gresham’s team for the remainder of the week. Unfortunately two other members of the team then had to leave the Camp after the weekend due to other commitments but both Amelie C and Henry J both shot fantastically well and showed great prospects for the future.

The team had an excellent week, which started with some fantastic conditions for training but then gradually got colder and colder as the week progressed. It became particularly unpleasant towards the latter part of the week, so much so that we cancelled a day of shooting as temperatures dropped to ‘Real Feel’ of -6 degrees and the snow did start to fall. Conditions like that are not conducive to good training! We were fortunate enough to be able to move that days training indoors and to conduct ‘dry training’. The team worked exceptionally hard, particularly the new Year 9 and 10 pupils who were on a steep learning curve but took on board everything that was thrown at them. Particular thanks must go to our Captain Fergus R who really stepped up and encouraged the entire team throughout the week.

The training always starts at short range (300yds) and then over the course of the week they shoot over increasingly longer and longer distances. By the end of the week, the team were shooting over a distance of 1000yds. Shooting is not just about firing the perfect shot, although this is clearly important, there is also a lot of personal admin required and record keeping to be done. The evenings were spent learning the skills of plotting and coaching, which are both very important skills to have as the wind can have a massive effect on a bullet even at short range, let alone at 1000yds.

These sort of trips do not happen without the assistance of many people and thanks must go to Mrs Liberman, Capt. Scoles, Tony Clarke, Owen Liberman and to the OG’s that all gave up their time to assist with the smooth running of the camp.  It was a fantastically successful trip.