Holiday Photos #16

The last full day we were in Conway they were doing recreations by a group called the Plantagenets, something like the SCA in the US I presume, up at the castle. It's a little bit of theatre, but fun.

There's something sort of surreal about the players and their tents and banners set up in living color in the grays and greens of what is more of a castle ruin then a castle the way it would have been in the actual time of knights and ladies. Sort of like watching two time frames running at the same time, or ghosts, although whether the stage or the players are the apparitions, who knows.

Here's William being taught how to shoot a long bow.

A troup of musicians.


By the time they had a round of exhibition sword fighting, there was a light drizzle falling. I managed to score a fairly dry seat... er standing spot, in an archway above the crowd.

Here are two knights going at it. See the knight in the yellow and black tunic in the middle of the background crowd? We had met and befriended him the night before when we stumbled on the troup in a local pub. Before the sword fighting began, they introduced each of the knights with great flourish and at each name the crowd cheered. When they reached the yellow knight and announced his name, a French name, we cheered once again while the rest of the crowd did what was apparently expected - they booed! We were confused and tried to switch midcheer. Something along the line of "Yaaaaa-ooooo?" which caused the crowd to laugh at us silly Americans.

This is one of my favorite photos from the entire trip. This little girl went to great effort to drag her papa's shield to him.

And as always, I've quasi-arbitrarily divided the photos into touristy and artsy. You'll find more castle pics over at Laume's Studio.