Medieval Day & Roman Forts

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I haven't had the chance to write for awhile because I basically spent 3 days at home resting and doing sweet fuck all after the Rebellion Fest.

Just reading back on my previous entries I really don't illustrate how awesome the Rebellion Fest was and how much fun I had. It's quite hard to describe seeing a band who made you sit back and think "Wow these guys rule" in more then a sentence without using sexual innuendos or writing a novel.

So to get you in the mind frame, think of the best band you saw live. Times that by 4 (there Rebellion Fest was 4 days) and add getting really drunk with a bunch of awesome people. This should equal somewhere between drop kicking a midget, a bouncy castle on the moon and watching two cows try to fight each other. If it does not, go back to school. That's what they taught me.

If you have not seen a band live before, there's a pretty good bridge in Auckland called the Harbour Bridge. I've heard jumping off there without a bungee cord is better then any live band you'll ever see.

Tyne Mouth -

Medieval Day
So all the family are gone and I'm on my lonesome except for Raph who's at work all the time.
The castle at Tyne Mouth are having a medieval day and there's going to be some guys in armour fighting each other. Badass.

Paid the £4.5 ($12) to get inside. 12 bucks to watch a bunch of guys in armour beat the shit out of each other was more like an investment then a cost.

There was some Archery practice going on in an area and you could pay £1 ($2.7) to have a blat on 4 arrows.
Of course I had to have a go. It's real tough. You look at all these little kiddies struggling and you think "What a bunch of pooftas. I remember back in my day, we used to play marbles. If you lost, they took all your marbles. Kids these days, just don't know how hard it was back then."
It was actually a lot tougher then it looked. I had a lady teaching me and she told me to pull the bow back as far as my chin. Yeah.. Didn't happen. haha.
The arrow kept falling off my finger. Eventually got shooting, but missed the target everytime. I decided I'd make a lousy archer.

An interesting fact I learnt (which Mark had actually informed me of earlier) was where the Double Fingers came from. English Bowmen used two fingers to shoot their arrows to pull back the shot. Whenever they were captured by the French, they would cut off their two fingers so they couldn't shoot.
The English used to pull the double fingers to the French to prove to them that they still had their bow fingers.

There was this guy who had a go and he's one of those hustler douche bags that you know has been doing archery for 30 years. He had a go and hit the target every time. Lined it up like he was pissing against a wall. Bastard.

After that I watched the lady archers shoot. Jesus. I wouldn't want to fuck with them. These ladies were hitting the target almost every shot. They made me look like an infant trying to tie his shoe laces.
They had a competition going where they had several different targets. One target they had was a ribbon with a bell attached to it. Two of them shot and the first to hit the Ribbon won (obviously because the bell would ring when they hit it).
A few of them hit it 2 out of 3.
They then had this "bird" target which kinda catapulted up from the ground. You have about half a second to think before it goes back down. Again a few of them hit it 2 out of 3. Crazy.

Apparently it was very common for females to go out and hunt in medieval times as they needed food and their husbands might be away from the castle for long periods of time.

Next was the guys with long bows.
I don't think any of them ever missed the target. They had to fire 3 arrows at a target that got spun around real fast. Some of the guys hit the target every time. They didn't go on for very long as you'd already seen people shooting for about 30minutes and there was another event coming up shortly after... Squire Training.

A squire was someone who wanted to become a knight and would be a weapon/shield carrier whilst he was learning.
Squire Training was mean. They had a demonstration using a Sword, an Axe, a Mace and a Lance. They asked if anyone wanted to train to be a squire. You had to make yourself really obvious if you wanted to have a go. All the little kids around me started screaming their lungs out. This one kid in particular was like "PICCCCCCCCCCCK MEEEEEEEE" so loud that I think the reason they picked him was to shut him up.
I then tried his approach and got selected.

So I was much better at this then using a bow. Up first was the sword. The guy called out directions and you had to hit where he was saying. It was pretty tough because he'd call 'Left' and you had to hit his left... which was my right. Being the ruthless gangster that I am, I cut a piece of wood off the wooden pole in front of me. The guy was like "Fuck... You can keep it for a souvenir if you like?"
I carried the chunk of wood around with me the rest of the day.

Next was the Axe. You had to hit this shield...but the guy told me not to do it too hard. Of course, I ignored him and beat the shit out of it.

The Mace was fucking loud. You have to hit this helmet. Every time I hit it my ears would ring as it was so loud. Tough weapon this was.

Up last was the Lance. The rules of using this was you had to do a War Cry as you ran at the shield. You had to be careful that the ball and chain didn't hit you in the head. Of course, being the as stealthy as a cat, it missed me completely.
I got myself a Squire Certificate and returned to the crowd.

Up next was the ladies dancing. It was a tad.. uh... 'Fruity.' Not really much more to say other then they danced.

Then the moment I'd been waiting for... THE BATTLE!

To describe it in detail would be kinda pointless. There was a French side and an English side. They beat the shit out of each other, the end.
One thing that was kind of annoying was (for entertainment purposes) this Black Hooded guy who acted like a very poorly played Jack Sparrow. He was meant to be on neither side. They started putting on this over cheesy kids show where he got kicked in the bum and his squire got his hand cut off etc which went on forever and to be honest, just pissed me off.

Hadrians Wall

Again another trip by myself. I caught the Train into Newcastle which arrived late so I only just made it to the Hardians wall bus on time. Thank god the driver smokes.
We had a tour guide on the bus who gave out some really interesting information about the wall and other bits and pieces.

On the bus ride there we went past this guys house who had a train carriage next to his house. Apparently the dude has dinner parties there. The guide didn't know whether he cooked inside the carriage or whether he had to run back to the house to get the food. What a badass.

The only bad thing about the guide was that he stunk. Seriously fucking reeked of BO. I felt like putting my hand up and asking "Hey man, you seem to know a lot about history, but have you heard of deodorant before because you're stinking out the entire bus."

Hadrians wall is 73 Miles long (80 Roman miles) and goes from Wallsend on The River Tyne to Bowness on Solway. Emperor Hadrian ordered the wall to be built during his visit to Britain in AD 122. This was to keep Barbarians out of Roman Britain.
The wall consisted of forts, turrets, mile castles, ditches mounds, civil settlements and signal towers as well as a stone wall.
There were 16 Forts built in total which usually contained about 500 men.

I went to two of the Forts Housesteads and Birdoswald.

Fort Housesteads

Housesteads was really cool. You can see a really big chunk of Hadrians wall going off into the distance. There was some really informative information about the fort and everything located there. This was displayed in front of the ruins so you could see exactly how everything would've been laid out.

I met some guy who's from Christchurch in England he took a photo of me at ruins (you can have a look at my photos).

At each stop unfortunately I only had an hour and a half before the next bus arrived. So time was pretty limited.
I managed to rush up the hill take photos and read a bit before I had to get back on the bus.

Fort Birdoswald

Birdoswald was meant to have a Roman Battle on but they didn't. This place sucked the bean bags hard. I arrived there expecting to see a really wicked cavalry show or at least a remotely decent fort and was let down by both. I don't know if you'd even call it a fort. There was a tiny bit of wall and a small piece of courtyard.
There were some actors there who were talking about how people got buried in the Dark Ages. BORING.

There was a Victorian house there which wasn't all that impressive to be honest. They were probably responsible for the lack of fort as they would've most likely used the stones from the walls etc to build their house. Bastards.

The cavalry show was only going to have two horses so I had to make the decision to stay and watch that or go to the Roman Army Museum.

Roman Army Museum

Again time here was short so you had to make the most of everything. An hour and a half seems like a lot, but it really isn't, especially when your bus runs 10minutes late.

This place was real cool. Had lots of ancient artifacts and heaps of weapons etc. Mean.
They had a movie that went on for about 30minutes called The Eagles Nest. This covered stuff on Hadrians Wall, the Roman Empire in Britain and tried to convince you to see The Roman Vindolanda (a Roman fort close by) as they worked closely in conjunction with them. Good marketing technique. I was real gutted I couldn't go to the Vindolanda as I chose to go to Birdoswald instead and there were no buses running.

Basically the whole place as really informative and straight to the point.


Alright that's enough for now. Have a look at the damn photos.
Chur

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