Campaign report from Bristol Renfaire!
I've driven past the Bristol site for years, on the way up to WMAW (which is about 30 minutes further up the road, past Bristol), but had never attended. My wife and I both wanted to see this faire, having heard good things about it for years, but this year we finally had a real excuse, since one of the VARF cast members moved up there this past year and is now on cast at Bristol. So we decided to visit and surprise her, which worked flawlessly, since the surprise actually drove her to tears of joy.
I'll post pictures later, as I want to run them through photoshop quickly first, but here's a run-down of how the weekend went.
Arriving, we decided to take the advice we were given, and pay for the preferred parking. They have plenty of free parking, but it's way off to the sides, beyond the cast and staff parking. The "preferred parking" puts you right up near the gate, and costs $5. It's well spent, in this case.
We followed the directions of the parking staff, and arrived to find some cranky patrons trying to send everyone back in some other direction, claiming they were in special parking that cost them $110, and we shouldn't be there. The staff came over, and redirected us to just park. Cranky patrons. Lovely.
The weather report was claiming 79 for Saturday and 81 for Sunday, so I decided to armor up on Sat. The weather people lied. Saturday ended up being quite a bit warmer than that (and Sunday was only about 75). I should have been clued in by the amount of salt I was tasting from my own face, but I just thought I was out of shape when I was getting winded quickly by walking around the site (since I've been staying off my knee after the minor injury at Longpoint). But no, it wasn't that. I was already dehydrated, less than an hour into the day. I dropped my helm and shield in the car, and it wasn't enough. I needed to lose the gambeson too. So by about 2-3pm, I had switched out to the aluminum mail over a linen shirt, and only then was I able to catch up on hydration and cool down a bit. And then stomping around the site was no longer making me want to sit down every 50 feet.
On Sunday, we wore our nobles, and ironically were very comfortable all day in them.
The faire itself is very nice, and is about the same size as MDRF. The structures are styled very similarly, with a look and feel that reminds you of MDRF at almost every turn. It's very shaded, with plenty of tree cover. But there are plenty of notable differences.
The site had a wooden bridge over a pond, it had rides, and some fighting games (popping balloons off of each others heads with fencing sabers, foam-sword fighting, etc). The joust was quite excellent, and they had a falconry show.
It's a historical faire, with a very historically-minded Elizabethan court. And yet, they also had fantasy elements on cast, including fairies. In fact, Sir Brian's lovely fairy would have felt right at home, as they had a miniature fairy village, a fairy shop, and a spider-web bordered fairy glade.
The Elizabethan cast were very good to us, knowing we were VARF people, and even drew us into some of the courtly activity when we were in our nobles.
And the shopping was very good as well. Of course they had plenty of the typical shops you see at faires, but also a few that you only see in a few places, such as Music of the Spheres (makers of fine musical wind chimes), and also A&A had their booth there as well. We handled many of the sharp pointy (and blunt bashy) toys, but didn't take any home at the time (the sales tax would have been a trade-off with saving on the shipping anyway). They also had other weaponry shops, including one that had the typical CAS-Iberia stuff, but also Sabersmith and Starfire.
We caught several of the shows, including the joust, falconry show, Steele Sisters, By the Sword, Whiplash, Dirk & Guido the Swordsmen, several of the courtly events, some of the music, etc.
Something we were very impressed with, was the size of quality of the cast. They had a huge cast of villagers/revelers, and quite a few musicians. And they all had their act together. In some ways, we felt MDRF could also learn a few things from this faire.
It's a shame it's so far away.
