#bladeworks

And that’s Bladeworks done for another year! Absolutely awesome weekend of fencing, training, some gaming, and lots of socialising in the evenings.

We took it out of Belfast this year towards Bangor for a bigger venue. I’m not sure Bangor Bladeworks is quite as alliteratively pleasing as Belfast Bladeworks, but we struggled on despite that…

Excellent technical workshops from the group of Irish instructors present - dussack by Paul Reck, Fiore’s dagger by Tom Gorman, naval cutlass by Eanna Watters, and rapier by Mike Prendergast, and I think we had people up form pretty much every club on the island, which was awesome to see. Also an exceptionally gruelling full day longsword workshop from Martin Fabian!

And from my own point of view I got to expose some people to test cutting, who had never cut with a sharp before. It’s always interesting to see the thoughtfulness creeping in after seeing what will and won’t work with a sharp…

Also we got a bit of sponsorship from the guys at River Horse Games with a very appropriate copy of the Highlander Board Game, which made the socialising in the evening a lot more fun and fitting :)

One of the definite advantages of camping in the venue, other than a quick shower there’s no real break from the training to the socialising!

A bit more detail on the event can be found on the MCG website:
http://www.medievalcombat.co.uk/2019/06/15/bladeworks-2019/

For now though, swords are cleaned, messers are resharpened, classes have resumed their normal flow, and its time to start thinking about next year. We may add some lectures to start bringing the academic side of HEMA into play a bit more for a start…