Today should have been Bluebell Sunday at Okehampton Castle. With the ongoing unpleasantness, our friendly local event with English Heritage couldn’t happen. It’s a case of the Bluebell Sunday Blues.
The last three years were a joy, especially last year getting up into the castle ruins for some swordplay and photos. We always get a lot of visitors to the tent for our ‘Five Hundred Years of Swords in Five Minutes or Less’ talk. Last year enough members came along to make some for entertaining demonstration sessions for our biggest audiences. The junior visitors got to do some fencing with the plastic kit.
Today consisted of shopping in town wearing a different kind of face mask.
Here’s to next year and a fine re-start to the Bluebell Sunday tradition.
Bluebell Sunday is the annual free-entry day at Okehampton Castle, under the stewardship of English Heritage. It is one of the two big local events that West Devon Swords attends each Summer. This and Super Sporting Sunday toward the end of July raise our public profile in the area as well as drawing the interest of new members.
Largest castle in Devon, Okehampton is a classic a motte and bailey castle with a stone keep dating from soon after the Norman Conquest. Converted into an up-scale residence in the 14th century by Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devon, the castle was the centre of local power. After the last Courtenay owner fell foul of Henry VIII in 1539, the castle declined into a ruin.