Day of knights turns Stratford into battleground
For one day a Taranaki town wellknown for its Shakespearean ties stepped back in time to play host to jousting knights, fair maidens and a Robin Hood or two.
About 300 people attended Baldrick’s Big Day Out Medieval Festival at Stratford on Saturday.
The knights were undoubtedly the stars of the bi-annual festival of all things from the Middle Ages. In shining armour they battled it out in Victoria Park with everything from swords, to spears, to jousting sticks. While you never saw his face behind the helmet, one knight who won people’s favour was Rahul Bhoran.
Somehow he managed to endure the muggy weather while fully armoured and with kids firing arrows at him all day.
Bhoran admitted he may well have deserved a medal for his efforts.
If knights weren’t your thing there was a raft of food and craft stalls, blacksmithing displays, crossbow lessons and a jester always on hand to laugh at or put in the stocks.
Bow toting Robin Hood character Dan Hales might have been missing the merry men, but he was living his own Middle Ages dream as an archer and bowyer.
The Stratford resident crafts traditional English long bows and custom makes flat bows, some of which follow a Danish design thousands of years old.
Hales said he had been making bows for more than a decade, a skill that seemed a natural progression for someone who loved making things out of wood.
‘‘I remember asking my grandfather when I was 15 if he would be able to teach me to make a bow.’’
But his grandad said no, so he went on to scout out a master bowyer in Rakaia, near Christchurch, who schooled him.
The weapons Hales produces are not for child’s play, with some of his flat bows capable of shooting an arrow 250 metres.