April at The Rhynd

May 28
3 min read

THE STORY OF THE CLAY GROUND

Sometime in 2018, a year before my father John died, we took him to the clay ground to have a shot. By that stage of his Parkinson’s disease, he was confined to a wheelchair and had terrible shakes. The instructor loaded the gun for him and passed it over. I did wonder, as his arms shook uncontrollably, whether it was a good idea to be handing him a loaded weapon.

He whispered ‘pull’, and the instructor released a clay each from two traps. As soon as they were launched, the shakes stopped, he put the gun up and obliterated both. He calmly unloaded the gun, smiled, and then the shaking started again. It was extraordinary and not only an insight into some largely misunderstood neurology, but also how good a shot my father was. He loved shooting – whether it was with an air rifle, a .20 bore or with a muzzle loader. He was passionate about muzzle loading (when powder, shot and wads are loaded into an older gun via the barrels rather than the breech), and it was spectacular to watch. Flames would erupt from the end of the gun when it was fired, and everyone was left in a cloud of smoke for, depending on the wind, quite a while. He hosted annual muzzle-loading championships at the Scottish Clay Shooting Centre, which always took ages as you’d fire two shots, and then spend the next minute loading.

John Foster firing the muzzle loader

It's unsurprising that he built the clay ground, such was his love of shooting, but the way it came about was unorthodox. Planning for it was difficult to achieve because of the flat land around here – the sound of the shots would carry and potentially annoy neighbours three miles away in Tayport. However, if banks were built around the area to send the sound up, planning would be granted.

In 1998, major refurbishment work was done on the Tay Road Bridge four miles to the north. The central viewing platform was removed because of safety reasons, and then there were various improvements for cyclists. This created a lot of concrete waste to get rid of and my father was quickly on the phone to them asking for the ‘rubbish’ to build the bunds. “We can’t pay you in cash, is there anything else we can do?” came the response. “Yes,” my father said, “you can give me 15 new clay pigeon traps, build a clubhouse and a skeet range”. And so, in a shady mafioso-esque deal, the clay ground was born in 1999.

There were two towers for the skeet range, and there was a down-the-line range. A key one was the high tower, but because of RAF Leuchars to the south, he wasn’t allowed to build one. He decided to buy a cherry-picker, which was fitted out with a trap on the basket, and that was erected each morning.

The clay ground when it first opened in 1999

There has been huge change at the clay ground in recent years, and we’ve added an archery range, a field archery range, and axe throwing. The latter is much harder than it looks on the Netflix series Vikings. And archery is much harder than Kevin Costner made it look in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

We now offer axe throwing and archery

One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is our approach – we genuinely have some of the best instructors in the business, and we want everyone to have a good time. We must be doing something right, as we have now been in Tripadvisor’s top 10 per cent of attractions worldwide for five years in a row. It’s an extraordinary achievement when you consider that there are eight million listings on their website.