abendgules | In years to come, they would call it the Wet Raglan... pt 1

So we're all home, and now mostly dried and aired out, and are (gradually) being put away. I'm still getting my usual workday routine back, but have spent most evenings slobbing after some halfhearted laundering and putting-away.

This year we travelled in splendid spacious comfort with

armillary, who found that renting a 3-seat small van would be £200 cheaper than an estate car for the days requested. Go figure. So we actually brought all our camping kit home, instead of stashing it in the VitusVagon as usual - probably for the best, as a great deal of it needed drying out.

Why, you ask? Ah, well, we can thank Wales' lovely liquid sunshine.

Our travel was uneventful, with most Londoners still avoiding roads after months of predictions of travel chaos during the Olympics from TfL.

armillary kept remarking on the fine conditions, and I kept knocking on wood or wood-like substances. It doesn't do to tease the London travel gods.

We arrived at teatime to find the site heavily windblown; while waiting for our kit to be decanted from the VitusVagon we helped Matthewe Baker set up his enormous pavilion, which was taxing in the serious wind. I was very glad of extra hands to hold ropes and hammers for stakes!

Our own pavilion, blessedly, was its usual pleasure to put up - 17 minutes from staking out with magic string to last pole, including a quick canvas repair at one of the loops. I was a bit alarmed by the 'play' in the centrepole and spars; this may have been the harshest test yet for our pav, but it held up. Hurrah for oak centrepoles.

That evening's meal was courtesy of the chippie, and fish and chips never tasted so good after hours of wrestling with canvas and wood in the wind and rain.

We crawled into bed early. As much as I wanted to visit, I now know I'm better off with a decent night's sleep at events.

Thursday started promising, but midway it started to rain, rain, rain. We were caught just near the end of an IKAC, and had to take a break to keep ourselves from total drenching, vs getting just soaked. I was amazed as many people stubbornly stayed to shoot; it was getting pretty uncomfortable, and the straw butt had soaked up water like a sponge and was danged if it was giving back any arrow points!

It was a great relief to get back to the campsite for midday dinner, and a not-terribly-medieval cup of tea.

In the afternoon I think I armed to catch Mssr Cernac's C&T class but only caught the tail end of it, but it meant I was available to marshal Sir Vitus' ransom rapier tourney - which proved to be a sort of freeform fountain-court-of-treachery, with death-from-behind thrown in. The only aspect that slowed it down was the handing over of tokens, requiring people to take gloves off, put hands in pockets and pouches, find slippery pearl tokens, hand them over to ransomer.

With the death from behind proving so popular with the youngest fencers, it was very tempting to treat the tourney like a pantomime (HE'S BEHIND YOU!) but after the first couple of deaths I decided to leave them to it.