“You’re right, Sally, it is better than sex,” agreed Lita after her first go.

“I knew you would love it,” I said, pleased.

My sister-in-law and I may have been exaggerating slightly to make a point but that is the reaction you can expect to get once you have introduced people to cloud-shooting. In case you are new to my blog and haven’t heard of cloud-shooting before, it is the wonderful sport of shooting arrows up into the air so that they might return to earth hitting a target (in this instance, two buckets from a distance of thirty metres). The sport requires a great deal of skill and judgement, especially if your arrows are different lengths and weights (as were our’s), and there is a wind (which there was this afternoon) and you have to make allowances for drift.

“This could be addictive,” beamed Diane, the girlfriend of my brother Henry, as, with surprising strength, she pulled back another arrow  (the rest of us were taking cover under trees at the time).

Naturally, we were supervised and kept under control by the watchful – and sometimes fearful – eyes of our trained master-archer, Roland, who supplied the venue (one and a half acres of isolated garden), the weaponry and the lunch. As you can see in the photographs, it wasn’t necessary for Roland to instruct us to run for cover – we did that instinctively. On a serious note, it must be said that cloud-shooting is a dangerous sport – those arrows come down at a force strong enough to pierce the bottom of a plastic bucket (imagine what it could do to a skull) – so I would not recommend anyone to try this without the supervision of an expert. Better still, join an archery club.

And if you’re wondering if anyone managed to hit the target… the answer is yes! Maid Marian (formerly Lady Diane), after some rather frightening manoeuvres initially, soon became a dab-hand and landed an arrow in the bucket. Lita was next best and shot one of her arrows to within ten centimetres of the target. All the Robin Hoods and William Tells were highly chivalrous and cheered enthusiastically. I bet you thought I would say they were aquiver…