Breakfast in Bedford - Lunch in Nuremburg, Germany - Dinner at Stansted!
October 20th-26th 2009
My Bedford Training week started when Patrick (TomTom), Rodney (my car) and myself left for the North on Tuesday afternoon. Battling our way through the rain, taking a course that avoided the M25 and trying to ignore Patricks’ convincing voice to go through the centre of each town we passed, we reached our destination!
The brilliant ‘Flippant Hotel’ is where base would be for the next few days.
Wednesday morning came and training at the Bedford Range commenced intermittently that day. With a 3:30am start the next day, I was glad of an early night.
Upon hearing my alarm clock clearly in the night-time hours, I leaped in the car, bleary eyed and headed for Stansted Airport. My first International Jet Setting mission in a single day was just beginning!
Phil Unwin of RUAG (RWS Ammunition) was sending me and my .22 pistol to Nuremburg, Germany to be batch tested for competition and training ammunition. Naively thinking there would be few people around Stansted at that hour, I joined the masses on the bus to get to the terminal and to get through security. But thankfully with no problems I arrived safely in Nuremburg with Air Berlin. Finding a taxi outside, I drove straight to the gates of the factory where I was soon to meet Christian Thomas, the RUAG ammunition tester.
The facilities were brilliant and with his expert knowledge we had tried and tested a range of .22 
batches to find two varieties that suited my gun. To do this I was first asked to test shoot a couple of ranges of ammunition, to see which I liked the ‘feel’ of. (Amount of recoil). Selecting a competition and training variety, the gun was fixed into a vice. In no time at all a series of batches were tried, and two particular batches chosen due to their small group size (under 22mm with 20 shots) at 25m. Sorted!
Not being able to take the ammunition home legally or logistically it would be sent over to Phil at RUAG UK in Cornwall and then redirected to me. So knowing now my gun and ammunition function properly - it’s just down to the driver!!
With my flight back to the ‘Mother Country’ later that evening, it was fun for me in the afternoon to observe a German rifle shooter who had too come for batch testing. He brought his Air Rifle and .22 Rifle for which batch tested ammo is much more important than pistol due to the pin prick size 10 ring they have to aim at, at 10m with an Air Rifle and proportionately the same size 10 ring at 50m with the .22.
Fascinatingly, a batch was found for his Air Rifle that produced a single hole with 20 shots at 10m that a pellet sat in without falling out!! And a .22 batch that grouped within a 1 cent (Euro piece - 13mm)! How could he miss??!
So my fleeting visit was nearly over. Back to Nuremburg Airport….but my sight seeing was not over yet……
………..catching a few deserved zz’s in the airport, I wake with the awareness there are more people about and boarding is about to happen. At this point I found myself looking straight at a familiar face. A fellow British Sportsman, who I later discovered was to doing a fleeting visit to Germany on sponsorship duty……..Non other than our current tennis star Andy Murray!
What a day! Thank you so much RUAG and Phil Unwin for organising this for me. I am now loaded for the 2009/10 season - bring it on! With my feet back on the ground in all senses of the phrase, training commenced at Bedford on Friday for the weekend where Hannah Polak, Vicki Mullin, Rob Hale, Caroline Brownlie, Danielle Jones and Peter Friend joined me in the afternoon till Sunday, when we called it a wrap. After a very successful week Gorgs and the ‘Masarti Team’ set sail for Devon. Well at least for the next few days before another airport…………another training venue - Zurich SUI November!!
No peace for the wicked!
