Monday, August 19, 2013

A week in the middle ages - or why I love time travel


It's the next best thing to travelling in the TARDIS.  I just got home from spending a week in the 14th Century.  For the week we slept, we worked, we ate, we lived at Fort Rodd Hill park; sleeping in cotton pavilions, working on medieval artisan crafts and cooking, and we ate foods from the history books, prepared by our own hands, cooked over fire.

Me winding a warp for weaving.
Beside me you can see signs of flax fibre being prepared for spinning.

My favourite part of the week, other than the days when I got to play work diligently in the kitchen, was interacting with the public.  I learned a lot about life in the Middle Ages that just isn't in the history books, but telling people about what I was doing and learning - that was awesome.

I have a lot of ideas of what to do for next year, which include spinning and spending more time in the kitchen.

The saddest thing for me was that we only spend one week a year travelling through history.  A week spent eating only old world foods, living in an environment with good airflow (albeit a lot of large biting spiders), and with like minded people, was very much my cuppa tea (or Herbal Infusion as tea hasn't made it to England by the 14th Century).  I wish I could do this all year, a different century for every season... but alas, the sheep need feeding, the chickens need cleaning, and all the other barnyard animals at home miss me too much.




No comments: