Audley End

Audley End

Live jousting is definitely something! A little while ago, I visited the beautiful Audley End, a stately house surrounded in amazing gardens and grounds.  It was a special day at Audley End, Jousting for the Queen. There was a very important (and old!) visitor, Queen Elizabeth  1st and lots of brave knights on horseback who's job it was to entertain her.

There were lots of things there to do with horses, but I think one of the best was the Falconry. There were a bunch of very skilled horse riders with magnificent birds of prey on their arms. They demonstrated how they could get the bird to go after a lure :a fake pheasant that was being dragged behind the horses. It was amazing! It looked rather difficult, though. Then the horsemen spread out and the falcon flew from one horseman's arm to the other. The horses were so well trained that they hardly flinched but I noticed their ears were flat back against their heads They do this when that are a bit spooked. Still, the horses were very well behaved.

The second horse-related thing there was the cart-driving. In an arena, we got to see how ponies pull things like carts and other random objects, like tyres. The smallest pony there, a Welsh pony, was very excitable! Despite having to pull a heavy cart, he was racing along!

There was horse-grooming too although we didn't get long as there was a very long queue!

Of course, the main horse event was the jousting. Jousting is a medevial sport where two men in heavy armour on horseback, gallop towards each other, armed with long poles with spikes on the end of them. The goal is to stab your opponent, or even better, knock them off their horse!

Since there were lots of children there, the jousters weren't allowed to actually hurt each other. It was still a very intense game, though!




The Queen seemed to enjoy it!

There was music too

and an old stable to explore

The jousting was going on beside a very, very beautiful river. There were noisy ducks and a lovely stone bridge across the river.

It was a very hot day, so I decided to sit by the riverbank and cool my feet in the icey water! When I took my feet out, they felt numb with the cold!

The water was cold!!

The funniest person there was by far the Jester. In medievial times, the Jester's job was to keep everyone entertained. He was wearing stilts and a silly costume and it was really hilarious when he pretended to fall over on to the crowd!






One thing we didn't do was go into the magnificent house. By the time we'd finished doing everything else, the house was closed. We'll definitely go see it next time, though!