Margam Park
4th - 6th May 2002

A Musketeer's View

Saturday

We timed our arrival well (unintentionally), we'd got the tent set up and had a couple of drinks when it started to rain (which incidentally was the only shower of the weekend, which was unexpectedly good fortune). Managed to avoid the rain, then decided to hit the beer tent. Don't remember this being spectacularly exciting, which I think was why we decided at some point to bundle into Shortstraw's tent with some purloined bottles of booze. Once here we were cordially offered red wine, which I accepted - bad move! I then proceeded to completely miss my mouth and poured it all over my top - my nice, white top. The advantage to this behaviour was it provided entertainment to the others in the tent. The disadvantage was that it hasn't washed out and the top will never be the same again.

Sunday

Was just getting ready to have breakfast at Traders' when we were informed that powder issue was at 9am, not the standard 11am. Phil and I managed to get up there and get powder, and because powder issue had been moved forward, assumed drill had been moved back, so continued to our original destination - breakfast. Halfway through this wonderful meal, we saw the regiment marching past in full gear towards Drill. What's worse, Sonic saw us. And he wasn't happy....

We wolfed down the rest of breakfast, got into the rest of our gear and ran over to where the rest of them we doing drill. We thought it was great for a while because Sonic had us watching and not doing anything. But then we had to run the gauntlet. Which was fun. Not.

The battle in the afternoon was pretty good I thought, but as I write this it's a few days after the event and my appalling memory is starting to kick in. So it can't have been that good because I don't remember anything in particular, just hitting people and firing. I do remember there was about an hour of waiting before the battle, and about 40 minutes of battle, which was a bit short really.

Sunday evening there were supposedly Well Laid Plans to go to a pub "about 2 miles away" for food and drink. We (Phil, Mark, Zoe, Gerry and I) opted to be the second car-load, and wandered down to the gate where we'd be picked up. And waited. And waited. We were starting to wonder how far away this place was when the car arrived. The driver (Darrell) was definitely under the impression it was over 2 miles away. As we left Margam Park, we saw a sign - "Bar food, 2 miles" - pointing to the left. I thought that was a fairly good sign, but we turned right at this point. Then travelled some way up the main round. Then got onto the M4. At this point we were definitely dubious about the distance. We eventually found this place 7 miles and 10 minutes or so later. We thought this was a bit much, so we sent Mark in to tell those already there that we were going to a close pub, and left. We ended up at this "Bar food" pub (which really was a couple of miles away) only to find they didn't do food. But they did take children, and there was a Chinese and a Kebab hut down the road, so we settled for it. It didn't take long to get the rest of the regiment down there, and it turned out to be a blinding evening, full of drink and song. We scared off most of the locals, but those that stayed seemed to enjoy themselves. Oh, and Phil's Depth Charge was definitely a highlight of the evening - most of a pint of cider, plus Baileys, brandy, Tia Maria and Southern Comfort. Well, we had to celebrate his birthday somehow! He appeared OK for about an hour after downing this concoction, then proceeded to "lie in state" (as Henry so succinctly put it) on the picnic table outside for the rest of the evening.

We managed to bundle Phil into the car in the end and get him home (I'll never forget that long walk from the gate to the campsite supporting him all the way - strangely, Phil HAS forgotten that journey...), all the time he was trying to be sick and couldn't. Gave him some water at the campsite and that did the trick! I decided he was well enough to look after himself and went to bed!

Monday

Monday morning started well enough, in that we managed to have breakfast and actually make drill this time. Brigade drill went quite well too I thought. When we started doing it as an army however... Well, as always there was a lot of standing around and conflicting orders, then more standing around. Turns out this wasn't drill at all, but a photo session. Would have been nice to know what we were all standing around for! Once that finished, we started inexplicably marching away from the campsite and towards the Living History area, where we were informed they wanted us all to climb a big hill and have our photo taken on that. By this time it was time for Powder Issue (back at the normal time of 11 am), so fortunately the musketeers could leave to get powder. The pike block, however, were not so fortunate.

Monday's battle was really good though. Both Ma and I misfired right at the start and so couldn't fire our guns for the rest of the time. Consequently we spent a lot of time doing co-ordinated dying. The best moment of the battle has to be when our regiment ran straight through a King's Guard block and totally annihilated them - most satisfying! We spent a lot of the rest of the battle outnumbering them since we had Manchester's and Pickering's (I think) helping us out. Pretty much everyone agreed it was a good battle.

Soon after that (I think this battle lasted a bit longer than Sunday's) it was time to go home, and we left as soon as we could. However, what with wading through Cardiff at the same time as another football match was kicking out, I think it took us 6 hours to get home, including only a tiny stop at a services to grab a sandwich. Oh well, we had a good weekend and it was all worth it.