Eeeeeergh. I'm in Dubai. I've been here for two and a half hours. I HAVE EIGHT MORE HOURS TO WAIT. The worst thing about this situation is that there is a flight leaving for Perth right now. RIGHT NOW. I find this extremely unfair. If I was on that flight I'd be home by 5pm Friday evening local time, instead of closer to 2am. Gah. In other news, I had ten euros left on my visa card. When I got here I was super thirsty and lacking a water bottle, since you're not allowed them :( Anyway, I went and bought one for 7 of whatever the local currency is. Then when I finally got the internet working, I checked the conversion and 10 euros is about 50 of the local currency. I'm rich! Actually, not really, but I have enough to buy myself some foodthings.
I'm gonna stop talking about Dubai and start recapping my castle weekend now :) I went to a real life castle! In fact, it was THIS castle:
Yep, that's the TARDIS. The End Of Time was filmed there or something, so I'm gonna have to watch it again when I get home :P We got there late on Friday night and it was raining. I fell asleep in the car, but apparently just as we crossed the border into Wales the rain started. Since we had arrived so late, all the crashing space in the room upstairs with the wooden floor had been claimed. I had to bunk down on the stone floor of the great hall, which was just a little cold. Christine had lent me a blow up mattress, a sleeping bag, a cloak and some feasting gear. There were heaters, but the heat just rose straight up, so I pretty much froze. I had expected to be able to just pass out, but apparently not.
Anyway, we had to have our stuff cleared out of the hall by 9am, when the castle is open to tourists. I tell you, this is the best way to do an SCA demo. We just did our thing just like a normal camping event (IN A FREAKING CASTLE) and the tourists just sort of wandered through, and some of them chatted to us and wanted to know who we were and what we were doing. Having mundanes there didn't exactly spoil the atmosphere, because we were in a CASTLE! I never got over the whole real life castle thing. I wandered around and took tons of photos, which I will put up on facebook.
First thing in the morning after breakfast we had court. The game is a little different here, there seem to be people in pointy hats everywhere, but none of the usual reverence like in Lochac. No one bows, except when the royals process in, then everyone bows down and stays there for aaaaaages. Anyway, here's the outgoing Prince and Princess on Saturday morning
They were behind a table for some reason. Anyway, all the entrants for the coronet tourney were introduced and there was lots of grand entrances and stuff like that, and then court was ended and the fighters went to armour up. I spent the morning chatting to people, looking wistfully at their warm looking woollen garb and wandering around the castle taking photos.
Here's me in front of the castle! Actually, it was the back entrance, the tournament was happening on the lawn out the back here. I'm holding a cup of tea, which I pretty much spent the whole day doing. There was a hot water urn set up all day and I just kept refilling my cup with tea and honey, because it was something warm to hold and drink, and probably a good thing for my cold :P
Here's the people watching the tournament. The fighting was happening to the right. IN FRONT OF A CASTLE. Well, there was a winner declared and we all went inside for lunch. After lunch there was archery happening within the castle walls. I went out to see if I could borrow a bow, and oh man I'm rusty. I started with a 30 pound horse bow and just couldn't get it to full draw. I was also having issues with the stupid arrow staying on my finger, because there was no arrow rest. If I got anywehere near to standing straight it would just wander off to the left, it was very frustrating. Later one of the girls got out her take down recurve, and it was a whole lot better, although by then I was tired and felt like an iceblock. I at least started shooting a bit straighter, but I couldn't get anywhere near full draw. Eventually I called it a day. Next week's IKAC is going to be interesting. Waaaah.
Yeah, a lot of arrows got splintered in the walls :P I really wanted to shoot out of the battlements, but they wouldn't let me because of the road and the people walking around :( That evening was the changeover court and a feast. I was a bit surprised that there was no seperate coronation, but I suppose things are different for a principality. I learnt that in this part of the Known World, they don't shout "Huzzah!", they shout "Vivat!" which I thought was rather odd.
I was super tired, and eventually people started clearing out of the hall. The majority of the people at the event just day tripped, or had booked accomodation in town, so there weren't actually many of us left by 10pm when they lock the gates. It was a pretty quiet event. This time I was prepared for the cold! I spread the cloak out over the mattress and slept on top of it, and wore more layers under my jammies, also, I met this wonderful couple from St Florians that a few Anealans may know, Nerissa and Alaric. Nerissa lent me her hot water bottle :D I filled it up and put it in my sleeping bag before I went to bed and it was pretty amazing when I climbed in :D
They had also offered me a lift back to London, which was really awesome. We left early on Sunday morning to beat the traffic. Apparently usually events like this are pretty much just Saturday stuff and packup on Sunday. This event was the first time they were trying to put stuff on Sunday. It was mostly fighty stuff, and I had had my fill of being cold so I was quite happy to go back to London. On the way we stopped at all these touristy places, like Silbury Hill and the Avebury stone circle and Alaric told me all sorts of stories about Gabs and Stanzi :P. We had lunch in a pub in Avebury.
Isn't it cute! the food was pretty good too, and reasonably priced. We got back to London at about 3pm, and I was dropped along with the other two passengers at a train station. They helped me figure out where I was going and I found my hostel pretty easily. Then I had a shower and it was glorious, despite the teeny weeny pod-like bathroom. The water was hot and I was clean :)
So that was my awesome castle weekend :) I had a nap after my shower and then hung out in the evening for a little bit in the hostel before going back to bed. London adventures were to start first thing Monday morning!
I'm gonna stop talking about Dubai and start recapping my castle weekend now :) I went to a real life castle! In fact, it was THIS castle:
Yep, that's the TARDIS. The End Of Time was filmed there or something, so I'm gonna have to watch it again when I get home :P We got there late on Friday night and it was raining. I fell asleep in the car, but apparently just as we crossed the border into Wales the rain started. Since we had arrived so late, all the crashing space in the room upstairs with the wooden floor had been claimed. I had to bunk down on the stone floor of the great hall, which was just a little cold. Christine had lent me a blow up mattress, a sleeping bag, a cloak and some feasting gear. There were heaters, but the heat just rose straight up, so I pretty much froze. I had expected to be able to just pass out, but apparently not.
Anyway, we had to have our stuff cleared out of the hall by 9am, when the castle is open to tourists. I tell you, this is the best way to do an SCA demo. We just did our thing just like a normal camping event (IN A FREAKING CASTLE) and the tourists just sort of wandered through, and some of them chatted to us and wanted to know who we were and what we were doing. Having mundanes there didn't exactly spoil the atmosphere, because we were in a CASTLE! I never got over the whole real life castle thing. I wandered around and took tons of photos, which I will put up on facebook.
First thing in the morning after breakfast we had court. The game is a little different here, there seem to be people in pointy hats everywhere, but none of the usual reverence like in Lochac. No one bows, except when the royals process in, then everyone bows down and stays there for aaaaaages. Anyway, here's the outgoing Prince and Princess on Saturday morning
They were behind a table for some reason. Anyway, all the entrants for the coronet tourney were introduced and there was lots of grand entrances and stuff like that, and then court was ended and the fighters went to armour up. I spent the morning chatting to people, looking wistfully at their warm looking woollen garb and wandering around the castle taking photos.
Here's me in front of the castle! Actually, it was the back entrance, the tournament was happening on the lawn out the back here. I'm holding a cup of tea, which I pretty much spent the whole day doing. There was a hot water urn set up all day and I just kept refilling my cup with tea and honey, because it was something warm to hold and drink, and probably a good thing for my cold :P
Yeah, a lot of arrows got splintered in the walls :P I really wanted to shoot out of the battlements, but they wouldn't let me because of the road and the people walking around :( That evening was the changeover court and a feast. I was a bit surprised that there was no seperate coronation, but I suppose things are different for a principality. I learnt that in this part of the Known World, they don't shout "Huzzah!", they shout "Vivat!" which I thought was rather odd.
I was super tired, and eventually people started clearing out of the hall. The majority of the people at the event just day tripped, or had booked accomodation in town, so there weren't actually many of us left by 10pm when they lock the gates. It was a pretty quiet event. This time I was prepared for the cold! I spread the cloak out over the mattress and slept on top of it, and wore more layers under my jammies, also, I met this wonderful couple from St Florians that a few Anealans may know, Nerissa and Alaric. Nerissa lent me her hot water bottle :D I filled it up and put it in my sleeping bag before I went to bed and it was pretty amazing when I climbed in :D
They had also offered me a lift back to London, which was really awesome. We left early on Sunday morning to beat the traffic. Apparently usually events like this are pretty much just Saturday stuff and packup on Sunday. This event was the first time they were trying to put stuff on Sunday. It was mostly fighty stuff, and I had had my fill of being cold so I was quite happy to go back to London. On the way we stopped at all these touristy places, like Silbury Hill and the Avebury stone circle and Alaric told me all sorts of stories about Gabs and Stanzi :P. We had lunch in a pub in Avebury.
Isn't it cute! the food was pretty good too, and reasonably priced. We got back to London at about 3pm, and I was dropped along with the other two passengers at a train station. They helped me figure out where I was going and I found my hostel pretty easily. Then I had a shower and it was glorious, despite the teeny weeny pod-like bathroom. The water was hot and I was clean :)
So that was my awesome castle weekend :) I had a nap after my shower and then hung out in the evening for a little bit in the hostel before going back to bed. London adventures were to start first thing Monday morning!
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