And we’re back :)
Festival of Warriors 2016 – what a great event it was! Fantastic performance from Blademasters: big congratulations to Elliot and Joe for bringing us Silver and Bronze medals from the beginner’s longsword tournament! Well done :) I’ve got one more bronze from the Open Longsword tournament as well so we’re coming back with three medals!
Congratulations to the winners: Peter Smallridge for winning Gold in Open Steel and Keith Farrell for Silver – I had a great fight against Keith and enjoyed that a lot! But apart from longsword there was also women longsword tournament (well done Michela!), beginners nylon longsword, sword and buckler tournament and a rapier one. Congratulations to all medalists!
As usual the organization was top notch: beautiful scenery, perfect accomodation with great food (showers in each room!) for a fraction of a normal price, 5 tournaments, lots of great classes, super friendly atmosphere (it’s Ireland after all :)). Honestly I cannot find a single thing to complain about! Great job Neil!
Classes were brilliant too, I did attend Keith Farrell’s Longsword class on Zwerchau, Ross Bailey’s Messer workshop, Lyell Drummond’s Backsword and Targe class – all of them were really good, very engaging and just pure fun to participate!
Keith’s classes are always great and very educating – he’s one of these teachers that will always show you a new perspective, that there is always a better, more efficient way of doing whatever you try to do. I value that very highly.
Ross’ Messer class was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Well structured, clear and easy to follow with a universal body mechanics that can be applied to any weapon really. I think our vision of Liechtenauer system is pretty much the same so Ross – you have convinced me to start studying Lecküchner :)
Last class I did was something entirely new for me – Lyell’s principles of Scottish Broadsword and Targe, great class on body mechanics and a nice introduction to fighting with shield. Very deceptive style of fighting, entirely different from sword and buckler but very very effective. I did enjoyed that immensely!
But of course, there were lots of classes I missed: Andy Damms’ Pugilism , Gary Nolan’s Meyer dagger and staff workshops, I missed another of Keith’s classes and i missed some of Mike’s excellent rapier stuff as well. It was really an action packed event, not mentioning the evening attractions at the pub :)
Great event, I really enjoyed it and looking forward to next year!
I’m uploading videos from open longsword tournament and beginner longsword tournament to our You Tube channel now so check it out in a while, i’ll post them on our Facebook Page too once they’re ready.