The adventures of Pikeman Pete

Thanks to the patience and generosity of the John Bright regiment I got to take part in the re-enactment of the Battle of Newbury over the weekend. I was a pikeman for the Parlimentarians – or the ‘Men in Grey’ as we like to call ourselves.

There was a price to pay, it has to said. I had to undergo a crash course in the dark arts of piking – carrying the damn thing being the hardest ‘art’ to master. And as the newbie I had to dress up in the massively oversized bits and pieces nobody else wanted to wear.

There wasn’t any spare chest armour to help pull it into a more flattering line so the result was not unlike one of those comedy sumo suits people wear to wrestle in pubs. As you can see from the picture, the Simon Pegg look-alike behind me was most amused.

The battle itself was great fun. I got killed about half way through and watched the rest of the fighting from a rather cinematic angle as I lay prone on the field only centimetres away from a ‘deposit’ left by one of the horses on an earlier cavalry charge.

The battle ended with an historically inaccurate victory to the Royalists (they had organised the event and got to choose the outcome) and a raucous round of applause from the crowd who had come to watch.

All in all, a fun weekend. And a big thanks to Kirk Sadler for inviting me along.