The other jousting tournament that took place whilst we were visiting Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, England was of a sort that I hadn’t seen before.
Apparently all of the tournaments have their roots in old medieval traditions, this one doesn’t involve full armour, just a helmet and the aim of each knight is to knock the red “dragon” off the top of his opponents helmet with a baton rather than with a long lance.
The thing that puts some extra excitement into the mix is that there can be lots of knights on the field at one time so you might be busy focusing your attention attacking an opponent, but you have to watch your back as other knights come up behind you and try and attack you from behind.
There are always handshakes between the competing horsemen after each round, this is a chivalrous sport after all. I get some action shots of stuffed dragons flying, and after each round the winner does a victory lap around the field, then all of the knights line up and ride a lap around the field to thank the supporters in the crowd. This tournament is full of energy and the horses and riders get closer to the crowd than with the jousting with the long lances so this event has a very different feel to the other tournament.
The crowd are as enthusiastic as the riders, there are plenty of “ohhh” and “aggggh” moments as the knights almost take tumbles and when one knight is within a hair’s breadth of toppling his opponents dragon but gets caught out when a different opponent comes up behind him and topples his instead. There’s a lot of fun in this tournament and it’s infectious… and last summer when we visited, Family Kiwidutch also caught the bug.