Thanks for all the advice chaps. Much appreciated. Just a quick update to say we went over there today and handled a couple of guns. My dad decided the HW30s was for him so that's what we bought. The Gamo Junior was too small and light - it felt like a toy and that's as far as we got. He liked the HW so that was that. I must say I lean that way too so I was pleased. We now have a HW100, HW80 and a HW30s in the house!

I've test fired it with three different pellets that I had hanging around. AA Field, Accupels and Baracuda Hunter Extreme. I think the AA will be the winner - I shot a five shot group at ten yards and three of them went through the same hole. The Baracuda were second which surprised me as they're heavy. I think too heavy for a low powered springer? The Accupels managed just over 1/2" which also surprised me at such short range. The gun really doesn't appear to like them at all!

So far I'm very impressed with the little HW. It feels pretty smooth and shoots nicely. I've already smacked a rat off of the bird table with it and it kills well enough. I shot it face on when it was feeding and it went straight over, kicked once and gave up. It doesn't get much more humane than that.