BOLTON archery enthusiasts David Varey and Graham Mawhood flew the flag for English longbow traditions in an international event in Tibet.

The duo were invited to join a five-man England team to represent the European Traditional Archery Association after excelling at the national championships.

Varey, aged 53, of Heaton, has won the ETAA title for the last two years and teaches archery and fencing in schools across the North West.

Together with 54-year-old team-mate Mawhood, who lives in Tonge Moor and runs his own modern archery club, he set off for the Tibetan province of Qinghai not knowing quite what to expect.

And their stay in the mountainous state certainly threw up plenty of surprises.

"We had no real idea what we were flying into, but got a hint of the size and scale of the event from an article in the in-flight magazine," said Varey.

"It turns out archery is pretty much Tibet's national sport and the Qinghai international traditional archery competition we took part in had wall-to-wall coverage on the country's sports channel, which has something like six million viewers a day.

"There was an opening and closing ceremony akin to the Olympics in a big athletics stadium attended by thousands of people.

"To say we were treated like celebrities would be an understatement. People over there don't get to see many Westerners so they were intrigued.

"We lived up to that by using our traditional medieval bows and costume, which they loved.

"The England team even got a standing ovation from all the politicos as we walked past them at the opening and closing ceremonies, so I guess we did good."

As founder of the Bolton Longbow Archers' Club, Varey specialises in roving archery, an historic form of the sport that involves aiming at flags placed at differing distances on a large field, with points going to those whose arrows land closest to the flags.

He was geared up to compete in that discipline in Tibet, but things did not quite go to plan.

"The team took part in two championships in two different cities," he said.

"We were surprised to find out when we got there that the first was an indoor target archery tournament, the same as what you see in the Olympics.

"There were 64 teams from all over the world competing – from America, Australia and Europe as well as Asia.

"No-one spoke English, all the instructions we were given were in Chinese so it was pretty confusing.

"We don't actually know where we finished, we just know we didn't win.

"But the main reason for going was to share our cultures and our love of archery and we certainly did that.

"The second championships, in Jianzha, was called the Five Sacred Coloured Target.

"It has been going for more than a thousand years so it was an honour to be involved in it.

"The aim was to hit as far up the top of a small coloured triangle as we could from 70 metres, which was hard in itself.

"But in the Tibetan culture, competitors are allowed to do whatever they can to put off their rivals.

"So when we were going to take our shots they would suddenly jump up and shout 'stop, don't shoot', then burst into laughter when we stopped and asked them why.

"It took us a while to figure out.

"Some would stand in front of the target until the last second, others would shout and scream and lead a merry dance right next to you.

"We still managed to win two of our six matches, so that was pretty good."

Bolton Longbow Archers' Club is based at Aspull Rugby Club, which, with two playing fields back-to-back spanning 250 yards, is the only private area able to host the sport locally.

But Varey is keen to keep up the tradition.

"The area is steeped in archery folklore," said Varey. "The 'bloody murderous deeds' of Bolton and Blackburn archers against the Scots at the Battle of Flodden (on September 9, 1513) is recorded in historic documents.

"The type of roving archery we do now would have been used by those same archers as a military training exercise to help them get used to judging distances in preparation for battle.

"So we feel it is important to keep that tradition alive in Bolton."

To find out more about traditional archery, visit boltonlongbow.weebly.com/index.html or call 07973 878841.