festival of history!

i have got there!!

it was lovely meeting up with so many people, we loved it again. it was trickier this year due to sb’s foot – first day we walked too much and she was really pained so we left earlier than planned.

we loved – punch and judy show; bzents – sb in horatios last hurrah, totally fab childrens hysterical historical plays; the roman legions; the kinghts fighting and jousting; the fire eating stilt walking fool; d day re-enactment – firing sb’s enthusiasm for a subject not really thought of here yet. also just walking around the re-enactors a lot of them took a lot of time to talk to us and answer questions. sb is getting more and more confident at asking and we went round pretty much all the areas chatting and seeing what was going on, sb mostly taking the lead with who to talk to and what she wanted to know. the living history tent also excellent with a go at all the archaeological techniques and easy hands on for both girls. bb particularly loved the skeletons. we impressed the display girl as me and sb using ‘proper’ bone words. not hard really for me though is it!! the head of saxon finds who was manning the metal detector finds was also a treasure himself, and they all had oodles of time. the family zone with the ever popular sandpit, games, morris dancers, bands etc. sb loved actually one stand that had a travelling show theme with pretend animals etc. sb and i also popped into one of the more ‘adult’ talks on dressing mr darcy, and had a look at costumes. not for long, but she thought she would like to go to more of those next year!
i think that one of the most impressive things is that english heritage are so obviously very keen to give a hugely satisfying day out and have put lots of thought and effort in. we will hopefully be doing it again next year, and hope people might again join us. tent sharing is fine and easy for a weekend, and saves a lot of tent taking down effort!!

now i have thousands of flickr photos to do.

slightly terrifying was doing a wee in the cubicles by the main arena whilst the parlimentarian big guns were going off.