Surrey Hills Wood Fair 2025

 Greetings

The week after Amersham the Paladins and I were at Surrey Hills Wood Fair.

The site took a bit of finding and , luckily, I had looked the event up on line so knew what the un-signposted five-bar gate site entrance looked like.

I arrived at about 2.30 on the Friday and helped put up the main shelter. I then put up my own tent.

The great advantage of this show was that we could park our cars just behind our tents. This helped a lot with set-up.  I concentrated on getting the inside of the tent to rights, with particular attention to getting the bed set up, but did not have time to get the awning up.

I found someone to help me with the awning the next morning.

Here is my tent.

 I had had an idea at Hever and tried it out here. I  used the door/ privacy screen a a small awning during the day, using the two long poles I used to use with separate awning ( that does make sense- trust me).

I used two double ropes from my other ( larger) tent and ( removing their plain finals) was able to use mitre finials that I'd carved and painted myself.

It was rather narrow, but it worked and looks good,

Here is the rest of the encampment.

 We were scheduled to do two shows each day: a kids battle in the morning and a tourney in the afternoon.

I didn't do the kids battle on the Saturday, but armoured up for the tourney in the afternoon.

There was just me and Deejay fit to fight that day, but, fortunately Ali and some of his full-contact fighters( I think the group is called Invictis) had also come along. We divided the full contact guys in half and gave 'command' to me and Deejay. The heavies all fought each other and I fought Deejay.

We arranged three clashes and my side was down to win.

After the first clash, all my guys were down, so I invoked the relic in my sword and raised them.

We went in for the second clash and then, again, my guys were all down. I made a great show of calling on the help of the St Michael and the Heavenly Host to get them back on their feet.

Then the final clash  in which Deejay and I apparently killed each other, but I then miraculously recovered.

Unfortunately, my efforts the raise my men (who where dead again) showed I had exhausted the power of my relic and I was forced to get the crowd to help me raise them-  and their fallen foes

It was a lot of fun and went down very well.

The weather was not very good and all the sites was predicting a bad storm for the next day. This led to Ali's group deciding that they were not going to stay and they all went home on Sunday morning.

The weather turned out to not be so bad on Sunday morning and Deejay and I did the kids battle. 

It stayed dry until lunchtime, but just after Deejay and I armoured up for the tourney, it started to rain.

As there would only have been me, Deejay and Paul, we had arranged to do a second kids battle to be followed by a short tourney.

But the rain settled in and showed no sign of stopping and all the public took shelter,. We were never going to get any kids for the battle and the footing was getting worse by the minute, so ( with the organiser's agreement) we called it on safety grounds.

I had managed to get the curtains, bedding and soft kit packed up and into the roof box just after breakfast, as I had been worried about trying to fill the roof  box if it was raining. I had also put all the bits I didn't think I'd need that day into the car.

The bits in the car turned out be both a help and a hinderance, as they were not in the right order and I kept having to move things to get other thing in, but I got there in the end and, with a bit of help got the awning and the tent down, folded and into the car.

And it was raining the whole time. It still wasn't as bad as had been predicted (particularly in regard to wind strength)  but it was still miserable.

As it was still quite early, I was able to stay to help with the shelter and solders tents, but, once most of the kit was piled by the van and being loaded, I had to make a move.

The journey back was - interesting. I chose a different route, as I knew that a section of the A3 was closed and this one took me all over the shop. At one stage I went up into wooded hills and and nearly had to put the fog lights on, as I passed darkly through the base of the clouds. I was very pleased to descend  from that stretch, especially as it was a very bendy road.

I got home and Teddy helped me unload and lay out the tent in the shed , over the banisters and everywhere ever else we could to let it dry out

Thus went the last  re-enactment event for this year, It was an alright show and would have been reasonably relaxing , but for the weather

Until next time

Adieu