This year the crowds turned out for a sunny July day to participate and observe the medieval festivities at the Abbey Medieval Fair.
I attended with my mum and my kids. With little ones amidst this enormous crowd, we chose to wander from place to place not attempting to be at any particular show at any particular time. We enjoyed the spectacle and the friendly cultured people. The highlights were watching live sword fights at the
Prima Spada School of Fence and the
New Varangian Guard Rusland Garrison (pictured above and below) and watching the camels.
I attended Prima Spada School of Fence in Brisbane in my twenties and really enjoyed the sport. After seeing the fun this group had at the Abbey Fair I want to look into taking some kind of swordplay sport up again.
This year there were plenty of places to stop and sit with a small blanket or on a hay bale, however the crowds around many arenas meant it was impossible to see, especially for young children. Every year we enjoy finding the Company of the Phoenix (pictured below) and photographing my son, Phoenix, with their phoenix emblem. Altogether the Abbey Medieval Fair is a wonderful place for a medieval fantasy reader/writer like me.
One day when life is not quite so busy raising young children, running a small business and self publishing my own books, I hope to attend as a re-enactor
myself. With my build it seems likely I will need to don the attire of a
knight. There weren't too many towering Anglo women like me in medieval
times as far as I'm aware.
Women were over an inch shorter, on average, in medieval times, than today. See
Daily Mail. Funnily, this article takes this to mean our medieval ancestors were not much shorter than we are today. I guess it depends on your definitions. To me, when you're talking averages, more than an inch is a pretty big difference. And at 175cm tall, I'm a whopping 17cm taller than the average medieval woman.
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