The 25th did not start well.
Firstly one beater was missing and whilst waiting it transpired that he had not been given the dates and had not known it was on that day. (he was as much upset by this as everyone else)
Also Frank was not available as he had a funeral to attend.
After a long delay, it was decided to drive the roundals first (whilst waiting for the missing beater to arrive) as that did not require a full complement of beaters. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding in logistics between driving the first and second roundal- guns at the east end were meant to move around and up the side, but did not. As a result, a significant number of birds were not covered which caused distress to some guns further back along the line.
I forget the order now. but before lunch, we encircled the lower arm and beat in in line before lining up below the arm.
Then the drive with guns along the estate road waiting for birds from the beeches etc was not a great success.
After lunch, we drove the wood from the weedy field back eastwards to the field over the road with better results.
Lastly, we did a manoeuver around the keillor road and sandy’s drive with some results.
By this time we had now got something of a bag and folk were happy to go home.
The good side was that the forecast rain never came and it remained fairly dull so the sun was never in our eyes.