Saturday we went to a French Market here in Ashby, just a minute's walk from our flat. They blocked off one of the streets and had all these French vendors with lots of different products there. Of course, there was the cheese stand, the wine stand, and the bread/pastry stand, but they also had soaps, quilts, candies, fresh fruits/veggies, freshly made food, clothing, sausages, etc. For a fairly small street, there was lots of choice.
Kevin went a bit crazy and we ended up with loads of food: wine, cheese, bread, cookies, veggies, paella, provencal potatoes, etc. We ate well for a few days! I bought some soap and really had my eye on this gorgeous toile quilt, but it was a bit out of my price range. Oh well.
This was a nice warm up to our visit to PARIS!!! in a couple of days. We're going for a week...more on that later.
Sunday, we set off in the pouring rain for Bolsover Castle just about an hour north of us. We went there last time we were out, and it was interesting to see it in the spring instead of the winter. (Although it was cold and rainy, so it kind of was like winter!) They had a demonstration of English longbowmen shooting the bows, and also had a display of various medieval weapons. We learned about the different types of arrowheads and what they were used for. We also saw a woman doing tablet weaving on a small loom she held on her lap. She was making the most beautiful braided trim and told us that not only was this type of weaving used as clothing trim, but also as rope since it was very strong as well.
A tree at Bolsover and the "Little Castle"
One of the men who did the longbow demonstration gave a lecture about medieval surgery methods (yuck!) using the example of Henry V at the battle of Agincourt in 1403(?). He got an arrow stuck in his cheek, and we heard all about how the doctors got it out and got it to heal. Pretty interesting.
We also took some time to go around the castle itself, which is a fantastic place, a really beautiful location. It sits high up on a hill overlooking the Derbyshire countryside. You could see for miles and miles.
We finished at Bolsover around 2pm or so, so we decided to go to another place nearby, Hardwick Hall. This was the home of a very powerful woman during the time of Elizabeth I, Bess of Hardwick. She was considered the 2nd most powerful woman after the Queen during the latter part of her life. The home was a gorgeous example of the building style popular during that time. It was fully furnished and had some really amazing tapestries, some of which were fully restored.
Hardwick Hall
There was also a stone mason workshop on site where they make all the stonework to keep the house in good repair. They teach classes and Kev looked into maybe taking a 1- or 2-day class at some point.
Finally, on the bank holiday Monday (still raining--apparently bank holiday Mondays are notorious for bad weather), we went to the castle here in Ashby for Clash of the Knights. They had archery demonstrations, a kids recreation battle, and some knights that actually duked (hah!) it out with swords and various other scary looking weapons.
The kids battle was the cutest. They chose kids from the audience and put them into two "armies", and gave them shirts to wear, one army was red, the other blue. They "recreated" a battle between the Scots and William Wallis and the English where they marched the kids around into different formations and had them say silly stuff. When William Wallis asked the kids what the Scots wanted, they all shouted, "Freedom!" in unison.
We were standing next to this family who had a little boy about 3 or so. His parents encouraged him to participate in the kids battle. So he climbed under the rope and started away. But then he turned around to his parents and said, "But I haven't got my swords!" The way he said it in his little British accent was just about the cutest thing we've seen. We almost fell over we were laughing so hard!
The clash of the knights was pretty cool. It was a bunch of middle-aged men wearing real armor (heavy!) and they had a mock tournament. At the end, one of the ladies there fought her knight with a sword, and ended up winning the tournament. Hah! ;-)
Clash of the Knights
1 comment:
LOVE the bank holidays! Should have more of those here =0
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