CYBEREVOLVED

Celebrating it’s tenth year, this event has fast become the largest of it’s kind in the world. With competitors arriving from all over the world to compete in the joust, with the sword and bow. I went with Rachael one of my friends from band and we had an absolute blast!! I took way too many photo’s to post on the blog so I have chosen a selection to give you an idea… hope you like my choices!

As you can see in this picture…the guy with the yellow shield and the armour in the distance is actually me!! I foolishly volunteered to let Rachael and others shoot arrows at me…unfortunatley she hit me a good few times…but the bruising is pretty much gone now lol! I’m sure the guys running the archery appreciated my gesture as I am fairly certain I was the only one to volunteer…certainly on that day!!

The next picture is of Rachael showing off her Archery skills…be afraid, be very afraid!!

Seriously…she got me good and proper; the chain-mail I was wearing weighs around 15Lbs and coupled with the shield, and hand protection and helmet I was feeling fairly weighted down already…had it been custom made for me; I am informed I would have felt a lot more comfortable…but in this instance since the helmet didn’t quite fit. I was as blind as a bat!! So unable to anticipate incoming strikes from my friend…I was beginning to wonder exactly where she was aiming at one point!?! (yikes)…

Being a jousting event, and something that was popularised by the recently departed Heath Ledger in a Knights Tale I was not at all surprised to hear them playing the Queen classic “We Will Rock You” over the tanoy to get the crowds into the mood…certainly gave the weekend a very ‘Knights Tale’ feel for sure…the guy in this pic playing the ‘air guitar’ was one of the competitors from Canada, lol and was quite a character of the weekend

So basically in Jousting the fence thing in the middle where the horses run down is called the list. When jousting was ‘for-real’ in medeival times they didn’t have one of these and it was only in later times that this was introduced as jousting evolved more into a sport than a combative pastime. The lances are tipped with a lightweight wooden tip. In this style of jousting ‘The Joust of peace’ only the torso is a valid target and not the head, also the object is not to dismount the horse. Points are awarded for the strike on the opponent with maximum points for shattering the tip of your lance.
This style of jousting became popular in the 14th century and in the modern equivalent an encranche shield is worn over the armour to prevent serious injury and also spread the force of the lance blow to the body, since there is no defensive move in this form of jousting! i.e. no tilting – this could open up your body to a potentially fatal blow! Basically the points break down as follows, 1 point for a hit that does not break the lance, 2 points for breaking the tip of the lance and 3 points for breaking or shattering the lance into several pieces

As you can see in the picture here both parties have scored the full 3 points for a good strike against each other…certainly gets the adrenaline pumping to see this in the flesh I can tell you!

Back in the day…when jousting was a little more serious and you had more choice for where to target, many jousters would wear detatcheable plums on the helmet; which if knocked off by your opponent would have been worth a great deal of points, since it was considered one of the hardest targets!

What I found really fascinating was the amazing style and athenticity of not only the armour but the headgear too…so I had to include this shot which shows you some prime examples of the headgear worn by the competitors this year. We even had a blacksmith/armourer on hand demonstrating the whole making of the armour thing too!! There is so much that went on at the weekend that I am sure I will have missed something. Anyhoo since there is lots more to talk about, I will leave things here and post a second installment hopefully tomorrow!!