Siege of Oystermouth Castle
The trip out to Oystermouth had something that no other re-enactment trip has ever had. Leg room! Townie had borrowed his dad’s van, so not only could he fit 5 re-enactors, himself, Rob, Eliot, Katya and me, but there was also plenty of room for all the spears and shields. Absolute luxury. I do wonder how it looked to the neighbours, a giant dark van rolling up our very suburban street, us chucking a bunch of weapons in the back, and driving off into the night. It’s about a 5 hour drive and Townie’s typical amusing road rage had also been upgraded to ‘angry man with a van’.
Katya was sick, but refused to miss Oystermouth, so she was bundled like a sushi of blankets beside me. She would become the Typhoid Mary of this trip. At one of the services where we stopped, Katya and I had waited in the van and were just starting to wonder what was taking the guys so long when their faces appeared in the doorway, proudly displaying the minion keychain, rubber squeaky flamingo, and stuffed whale that they had just won at an arcade game. Townie wanted to tie his whale up with plastic but Katya vetoed that plan, so he just hung it from the rear-view mirror.
We got to our accommodations around midnight, and most of Regia had already settled in. The community hall looked like an emergency housing centre with camp beds and sleeping bags everywhere. Some people were already headed to bed so the rest of us went downstairs. It looked like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, all of us sitting on plastic chairs in a fluorescent-lit hall. A few of the guys noticed that a couple of the rectangular wooden floor tiles weren’t exactly glued down very well, which inspired a game of floor Jenga, until Gwerin asked us to put the floor back. Back in the sleeping hall there was already a symphony of snoring, which would have made it impossible to sleep until Townie brought out an industrial size container of earplugs to help us drown them out.
So castles are rather tricky to capture. I’m surprised anyone ever bothered; the steep hills, the many stairs, the narrow doorways that are really hard to get through when there are people with spears wanting to kill you. Far too much effort. We’d parked at the bottom of the hill, not realizing that there was parking nearer to the actual castle, and hiked up a very steep incline with all our spears and mail in tow.
The castle was a re-enactor’s playground. All our usual games and exercises are instantly improved by the presence of a 12th century castle. Battlefields don’t change much, but the addition of hills, doorways, stairways and walls really changes the game. Oystermouth castle was originally a Norman castle, but the English could never seem to hold onto it for very long and the Welsh always got it back so it was already a ruin by the 16th century.
After the warm-up line fights, we had one game of zombies, where it was ØC against everyone else. We were on full hit points, defending the gatehouse, while you everyone else was on one, but they’re zombies, so they could respawn once they left and came back. ØC managed to hold the undead masses off for an impressive amount of time, until we had our last glorious stand in front of our banner. In a real situation (minus the zombie part of course), it’s amazing to see how at a small bottlenecked space, a few defenders with spears could easily keep a large number of attackers at bay. Especially since they wouldn’t have the ‘no stabbing in the face’ rule that Regia likes to stick to. One of the best real-world tactics would have just been to stab the first guy and then kick him down the stairs, toppling the attackers like dominos, since those stairs are rather slippery - more on that later.
For our games of defending the gate, Myles had created a very imaginative storyline for us to complete. The attacking force’s dragon had burnt down the gates, but then ran out of fire, so he had to go take a nap and we were left on our own to take the castle. We failed, so the victorious defenders then went to the identical castle across town, defended by our surviving twins (we switched sides). We also played Hell in the Hall, basically, found a dark enclosed room to try and fight in. The main challenge being trying to fight around the pillar in the centre of the room.
We had our second tournament of the year, so everyone’s name went into the hat and gradually fought their way to the finals. I got to the third round, though it did help that there was an odd number so I didn’t have anyone to fight in round 1 and just went through. I was eventually killed by Will, but we had a good fight first and it was close. It’s good watching how other people fight, some people are a flurry of blades and shields and it’s hard to keep track of the hits, while others are more technical, exact fighters, who wait for the exact moment to strike. ØC represented well, and the final fight came, predictably, down to Matt Town and Tom Robinson. It was a super close bought, and even watching the video it’s hard to see all the hits. It ended at 3-2, with the victory going to the ØC group leader. Robinson then took a knee to pay homage to Townie, at least there’s a pic so it must have happened.
We had more wide games that had us running around, making the castle look like a disturbed ant’s nest. We split into two sides to attack or defend, but the grass was lava so if you touched it you died. We also had archers, which added a whole other element. They would just appear, out of windows and doorways, and you forgot about them at your own peril. Between fighting we did have breaks for water, rest, and time to check out the battlements.
The evening was pretty quiet, ØC and stragglers went to a nice curry house - though this proved dangerous to a few of the more sensitive stomachs.
Day 2
In the morning a group of us headed to Wetherspoons for breakfast and most people opted for the ‘American Breakfast.’ Now what makes it ‘American’ is that is has pancakes, however, if these pancakes are not eaten promptly, they harden into something that could be weaponized. We figured we could throw them from the gatehouse as projectiles, bite them into ninja stars, or sew them into leather lamellar armour.
We did have one of the most… antagonistic rounds of Yellow Chicken (the game where everyone picks a team name for themselves and then everyone you kill joins your team until there’s just one team left) I’ve ever seen. I’d been stabbed in the back almost immediately by team ‘Haven’t Thought of a Name Yet’ when I started hearing my name being shouted. A few seconds later a couple people came through the doorway, with Tom at the head, proudly declaring their allegiance to team ‘Jenn was a Fat Baby.’ Now this has been a running joke in my family for some time, though it has escalated severely in the last few years. Yes. I was a fat baby. However, this seemed to come up in conversation every time we went to visit relatives in BC, and then Steve just turned it any an all-purpose punchline or a spontaneous thing to say if there was ever dead air in the room. This was brought to Germany during my Bode year by my cousin Kate, picked up by Katya, and so it has now spread to England to the point where dozens of re-enactors are running around a castle in Wales shouting it out. I also was killed by this team, so my calls were amongst them, just slightly less enthusiastic. Tom was very pleased with himself- especially when his team won.
Katya was also very amused, until he picked his team name for the next round: ‘Plastic in the Ocean is a Myth.’
We had a game of capture the flag, except in reverse, where you had to put your team’s flag into the other sides’s territory. One side had the ØC banner, a beautiful piece that had been hand-crafted by Katya and myself about a year ago, the other team - my team- had a plastic bag on a stick. I had avoided most of the heavy fighting because I knew there was a section of the wall where, if one was nimble and not too obedient of certain modern railings, one could clamber down the wall and bypass most of the fighting. Sure enough, Townie and Eliot tried it, but since a few of us were there, they couldn’t get down. Later in the fight, I climbed up and started heading towards them, since Townie was still on the walls with the flag. I had managed to scale a stone wall, jump a fence, and started walking towards him when I encountered an unexpected opponent - the stairs. Now smooth stone steps and slippery leather turn shoes resulted in my foot sliding off the edge of a step and me essentially pile-driving the step with my elbow. Fortunately, this was one of the last fights of the week so I didn’t miss much. I actually still fought Townie, but still lost since he refused to let the ØC banner fall and I was dispatched rather soundly. After a few days, I still couldn’t move my arm completely so I went to the minor injuries unit at the hospital to check on it. It was a bit awkward having to tell the doctors to ignore all the other bruises, which they kept prodding with worried looks, and to just focus on the part that actually hurt.
As we were packing up, the bruises from the weekend were starting to blossom on my arm, prompting Eliot to comment how he ‘wouldn’t even eat a banana that was that bruised.’ This was the last training event of the year, and it’s been an amazing season for everyone. We loaded up the van again, said good-bye, and started on the road home.
