Recently we held our inaugural Mounted Combat Gathering, at Unicorn Park Equestrian Centre.
We had participants and horses at all sorts of different levels, from very new and inexperienced, to seasoned campaigners, and everything in between. We felt it was imperative that the weekend offer something for everyone. We started off doing some drill on horseback, getting the horses used to being close to other horses, with the more experienced pairings doing more complicated and intricate manoeuvres.
After lunch we did a session on foot, learning some different techniques using swords, and then mounted up again, and practiced the techniques on horse.
After dinner we had a discussion on the evolution of historic saddles, run by Chris and Craig, with a selection of reproduction saddles from different periods and geographic areas.
Day 2 started with us doing some skill at arms exercises, using both swords and lances.
After lunch we learned techniques for sword versus lance, and then we were back on the horses to try these out. By this stage in the weekend, we had a few tired people and horses, a lot of what we did was quite different for everyone, and a few of the horses were quite new to these sorts of outings. For one of the youngsters, it was her first time at a place away from home, and the indoor arena can be pretty daunting. But everyone did well, and had fun, and hopefully learned some interesting things to play with.
We are hoping to make this an annual gathering, so now it’s time for us to go back to some historic manuscripts and look at some new mounted techniques 🙂
