To start with a cliche: It’s hot. It’s been over 30 degrees for the past few days, and there’s not much decline of temperatures in sight. Strangely, I find myself able to better cope with the weather than in previous years. It must be mentioned that spending a nice afternoon in the shade with the missus, a couple of cold beers and a few nice topics to talk about helps with the coping a lot.

Yesterday however, through quite a coincidence, we found ourselves surrounded by horses, damsels, swords, dogs, hell, even a true African owl. It turned out that there was a Knights’ festival in the city park. Despite the rising levels of hotness we decided to go check it out, after all, how often do you find a medieval festival right around the corner?

Honestly, I was expecting to find a handful of medievally clad people, a couple of tents and some shoddy ‘knights’ in plastic armour. I was pleasantly surprised. The ladies wore beautiful gowns, the knights wore authentic replicas of medieval armour, and there were many people just sitting around their tents surrounded by authentically made pottery and carpentry. We even got to find out how chain mail was made in the olden days.

There were also a couple of demonstrations, like a bird-show, a hunting demonstration, and the most exciting of them all, a jousting event. There would also have been a melee fight between knights, however, due to the heat, they opted to cancel that particular event. Fighting hand-to-hand combat, when the sun is at it’s highest, wearing full armour weighing at approximately 35 kg ís of course a tad bonkers.

After surviving the hottest part of the day happily sipping Murphy’s from lovely glazed earthenware (which you were allowed to bring home, yay), júst when we were about to leave for home, the jousting event started. As expected, this turned out the be a very exciting show, where the opponents’ shield shattered lances more often than not.

It was a good day.

Knights’ Festival Gallery