Oooo . . Look at all the pretties . . and battlefields too

We arose mostly refreshed on Wednesday morning and headed down to partake of the Continental Breakfast offered by the hotel. After a quick review of what was offered we noted that breakfast was heavy on sugar and someone asked them to hold the protein. We each sat down with our selection and it was noted that three of us were flakes while Mike was a crunchy nutter. Having broken our fast, we returned to our rooms for the remainder of the packing and the checkout before heading into to Leeds Royal Armoury.

Toys and pretties and movie props . . oh my! Leeds Armoury offered not only the standard museum fare of weapons

but they'd added an exhibition from WETA studios who had done some of the weapondry and armor for films like Hellboy, Lord of the Rings, the Last Samarai, and Chronicles of Narnia. Their creations were on display and were phenomonal. Although we all agreed that the armor done as a joke for a dog (including armoring his tail) was the best of the creations they offered.

We were lucky that the day's special activites also offered a historical interpreter for the battle of Towton, whose battlefield we had already planned on seeing after we finished with the Armoury since it was nearby.


We discovered that no matter where you go, Talhoffer still works the same. Some historical interpreters gave a demonstration of Talhoffer's teachings and we enjoyed seeing someone outside of our known group using the techniques. They did draw quite the crowd.



Here, Mike demonstrates one of the plates' intention as it teaches weapon forms.



By the time we'd been most of the way thru the museum and had reached the Asian rooms, Antina noted that she's pretty sure she blew a 2nd transistor. I know the guys were certainly looking a little brain-fried.


As we prepared to leave, we noted that we all must have blown a transistor or two because we were sure we saw a psudo Dalek in the education center window . . well, the picture shows we weren't seeing things but the question still remains, why?


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Leeds Slideshow

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With our previous lead in from the historical interpreter and having blown all our brain cells looking at all the historical weapons, we decided it was definately time to head on out and try to find Towton Battlefield (circa 1461). We put BB in place and headed out. Mike was double checking BB using the map and we found Towton with little challenge . .finding the battlefield however proved a little more challenging. We circled the battlefield unwittingly thanks to the DHL truck who was parked strategically to cover all signs and monuments marking the location of the battlefield.


After having found the entrance location and monument, we proceeded on foot into the battlefield itself. We compared the terrain to the stories told at Leeds and took pictures for future game terrain.


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Towton picture slideshow

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One battlefield down for the day and 2 more to go. So off to Marston Moore we head (circa 1644). We experienced slow farm traffic on the short drive from Towton to Marston Moore. We saw lots of fields on our way there, and once we arrived, we found even more fields. But this was fields with a monument. Mike was kind enough to inform all of us what happened historically at this battle and that made him our offical tour guide for this stop.

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Marston Moore slideshow

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Marston Moore behind us, we started out for Stamford Bridge (circa 1066). We had the full knowledge that the town has grown up over the battlefield and the bridge itself no longer exists, but they have a general vicinity of where the battle was and of course there is a monument. Since the monument was in the center of town, we also got to enjoy the artwork of the nice inn nearby, known as the Bay Horse Inn and coming into town we enjoyed the artwork on the sign for the Swordsman Inn. Also at the site was a corn mill, can we say "I like corn"?

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Having finished our normally scheduled stops we looked at the clock and debated whether or not Warhammer World would still be open. We decied to try our hand and take our chances so off we went into Nottingham. We were happily surprised to find that Warhammer World would actually be open later than anticipated and definately longer than we wanted to stay to still make it home. With that, Mike sat down and started filling out his and Michka's order and got some help . . from someone from Indiana who had also recently seen the WETA stuff at Leeds. What are the chances? The order placed, we went upstairs to the museum dedicated to Warhammer . . all the Golden Demon figures and many more were on display and we took several photos to remember the paint schemes.



Having returned to the main hall where the games were taking place, Antina and I noted that the only place where the gamers realized there were women in the place was in the bar . . in the main hall, they were evidently too busy gaming. We finished our tour by seeing the "Hero of Humanity" out front of the main office building. As the story was told to us, the only statues you can put up in England is for Heros and Monuments . . so Games Workshop named their space marine the "Hero of Humanity" to gain the permits to put him up.

Off to home where cameras were cleared in preparation for the next days avitivities.