Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Father's Day. Tally Ho!

Ok, so the weather on Saturday was absolutely ugly: humid, thunderstorms, just plain nasty. So that left Father's Day for adventuring which was kind of a downer. With Jacqueline’s Birthday (niece) taking up the afternoon and the Tall Ships in Brockville as a potential outing for my youngest I was feeling spread kind of thin. I didn’t know the half of it when I saw in Friday’s paper a tiny two line blurb about…a Medieval Festival. What the Hey? Here? It seems so. For the first time, Eastern Ontario had raised it's cultureless head out of the trough long enough to actually hold (get this) a Medieval Festival. And, much to my surprise, it didn't suck. Better than that, with almost zero advertising, it was just the right balance of populated without being crowded, authentic without being pedantic and downright fun.
Unlike the jousting found in "Medieval Times" of GTA fame the lists at this fair were populated by competitive jousters. (To be honest I was surprised it was still a sport, but apparently it is. Boy, did I miss my calling.) And even though there weren't too many knights on the field the jousts and tests of skill were very impressive and judging from the splintering lances flying every which way, very real. Overall we had a wonderful time. James loved the falconry display. The archery lists demonstrated numerous forms of ranged combat capability and the working trebuchet added a nice touch for the more mechanically minded. In addition there were a number of amazing artisans there. With the added bonus of the re-enactment troupes (particularly the Viking camp, which provided the pre-joust melee, and the gypsy dancers) the day rounded out to about four hours of stuff to see with zero boredom. All in all, folks, it was well worth the price of admission. I'll be watching for this one next year when it returns. Note: Re: Pic # 2 Yup that's James in about 20 lbs of chainmail and accessories.

4 comments:

NevilleBlog said...

Très cool

we have been to a couple around here and they are great. Although the jousting is just pretend.

I had heard that they did some sort of real jousting down in London (Ontario) a few years ago. The real thing. Paul said it was great!

You jousting would be like the Mountain that rides in the Martin books. I would like to see that. Perhaps you can get the gig for the HBO presentation of the books!

B.A. said...

Dude, don't tempt me. And yeah, these guys were legit. The MC was the reigning NA champion and they also had one of them from the local school http://www.equestrianmartialarts.net/
All in all, I'll take this over baseball any day.

B.A. said...

I'll post the whole batch of photos to Facebook in the next 24 hrs or so. Also, they've got a competition set for 2009 for folks to try their hands at making their own catapults. Very tempting.

NevilleBlog said...

Would that I were in Canada! I would love to work on a project like that!

i think the NA championshipsfn for the jousting was held in London a few years ago. Those were the games i was talking about.