After a busy first day of workshops and sparring, what better way to unwind than a cruise down the Thames. Attendees from all four chapters at our Coming of Age event this weekend, boarded a boat and set sail for an evening of food, drink and conversation.
It was a jam-packed day of workshops on the first full day of our Coming of Age celebration event. Students from all four of our chapters gathered on the banks of the Thames to partake in a wide range of workshops put on by our instructors.
Lizzie gave an introduction to Spadone, Dan looked at Alfieri humors, Apollon gave a Rapier masterclass, Kirstian taught an introduction to Longsword, Adrian gave a masterclass on use of the buckler, Simon looked at Godhino’s Montante, Luis introduced us to grappling, and Mark gave a workshop on Agrippa. All were well attended with lots of happy students enjoying the perfect weather.
We ended the first day of workshops with Simon and Josh from our Reading Chapter completing the final piece of their Spadaccino grading. Spadaccino is the most senior rank in the school and as part of it, they have to engage in a number of fights including a weapon they’ve never used before which in their case were peasant flails. Congrats to both of them for a well deserved honour. which has required huge number of hours of dedicated training as well as written pieces.
Given the pandemic and how it messed with everyone’s sense of time, it’s hard to believe that School of the Sword Oxford is now five years old.
Lovingly known as Soxford by our members, School of the Sword Oxford brought a change to our core syllabus and got us to finally embrace longsword as one of our core weapons.
Congratulations to Head of Chapter, Emilia, who has single-handedly built our Oxford chapter to what it is today. And now with some of her original students becoming instructors in their own right, we’re excited to see what the next five years hold!
This weekend sees our 21st Anniversary celebration with a range of workshops from instructors from all four of our chapters. However, before the weekend could begin, we needed to partake in a little light liquid refreshment as we made our way into the town of Marlow for some pub food and celebrate the first time that students from all four of our chapters have gathered together.
The food was excellent and the company was brilliant, setting us up for what promises to be an exemplary event weekend.
Our Oxford students gathered tonight at our normal training venue for their regular weekly training. Emilia continued to teach sword in armour – half swording or ‘mezza mella’ according to Fiore dei Liberi. There was a good turn out and a lot of fun had.
Our Oxford student met up again today for their regular outdoor freeplay session. These sparring get-togethers provide the perfect opportunity to practise techniques learned in class as well as get experience of fighting against opponents they might otherwise not get regular practise against.
Tonight at our Oxford Chapter, Emilia was teaching sword in armour – half swording or ‘mezza mella’ according to Fiore dei Liberi. Sword in armour is fun to teach but can be quite challenging to get right since we don’t use real armour in our training, so students needed to rely on their imagination a little. Either way, everybody did very well and they had fun looking at few interesting guards and drills.
Our Oxford students had their own BBQ / Cutting party this weekend with longswords being taken to milk bottles. A lot of fun was had by all. Thanks to Kristian for being a BBQ master and Mick and Sarah for hosting.
Tonight at our Oxford Chapter, students got to learn about fighting with sword & cape and sword & lantern – Rapiers in the Dark!
It was a fun and interesting lesson to teach and the students also seemed happy.
Our Oxford students were in fighting force today, e fighting at the Midsummer Fight’s Dream competition in Oxford (organised by our friends from Oxford Sword and Staff Club).
Everybody did brilliantly with four students attending and all of them getting out to eliminations – and even one bronze match. We’re all extremely proud of them.
