"These are some of the things that I have learned by doing experimental archeology, pilgrimages and re-enactments that I wouldn’t have got just from reading books.
1) Cleaning and drying leather boots is a pain. In warm weather it’s easier to cross a muddy field or a river by taking them off and hanging them round your neck ..... feet are easier to clean than boots. On damp ground, smooth leather soles will make you slide around all over the place unless you rough them up.
2) Archery was a numbers game....at Agincourt half a million arrows were bound to hit something squishy.
I have worn the armour of the period and the sheer blunt force trauma can be significant....I have advanced in armour into an arrow storm shot by modern 40-60lb longbows, and it can put you on your backside with just the transferred energy. When you are knocked off your feet backwards by a handful of half inch diameter arrows, guess which bit of your body is then facing the incoming arrow storm.....ouch.
If you turn to retreat, your relatively unarmoured parts are then facing the enemy and you discover that an arrow up your bum can ruin your whole day.
3) The carbon dioxide buildup in even the best medieval helmet limits the amount of full on swordfighting you can do before you need to lift your visor. Any more than a minute or two, without a special breathing technique and you’re knackered....and so you lift your visor, and we’re back to the archers again!
4) Sleeping rough with just a cloak wrapped around you is totally do-able for two or three weeks, even in the rain.....but it is not comfortable and no-one will sit next to you in the car on the way home.
5) Unheeled flat bottom turn shoes are good for a 250 mile walk, IF you stuff them with raw sheep’s wool or grass, and the lanolin will keep your feet dry too.....but your modern feet WILL hurt for a week.
6) EVERYTHING in the middle ages required muscle power...it’s easy to underestimate how many calories you need to survive day to day when you’re lifting and carrying all the time.
7) Wool warms up by an exothermic reaction when it dries, this must be why the Scots used to wrap themselves in a wet blanket before going to sleep.....not because they were rufty tufty hard men.
8 ) A decent hard cake, fruit cake or oat cake will keep in your pack for at least three weeks as you walk cross country, without dissolving into crumbs or going mouldy.
9) Honey smeared on a nasty head wound will stop the bleeding and is antiseptic. If you apply a linen bandage soaked in lavender water it heals quite quickly too.
10) It is possible to take quite a respectable bath in a freezing cold river in about 30 seconds, giving you time to get your clothes back on before any tourists or hikers happen by.....usually.
If you do get caught stark naked out in the open, you don’t tend to worry too much about it....it’s happened to me three times now.
11) When you’re on a long march or a pilgrimage, everything reduces down to a few basics.....footwear, shelter, food, drink....you eat when you can and you sleep when you can, and after a few days you begin to drift into an almost meditative state.
12) When you make something beautiful or functional by hand with hand tools, you learn to value ‘stuff’ much more.
13) On a long march or pilgrimage you cat nap, falling asleep and waking up regularly because out in the open every gust of wind and every fox or badger disturbs you ..... this carries on through the day as well. Sleeping for eight hours becomes a thing of the past.
14) Beeswax has LITERALLY dozens of uses, maybe even hundreds....never go on a long walk without some.
15) The middle of a battle is chaotic, terrifying and NOISY. You don’t know where anything is or what’s going on, and you are totally reliant on the men around you.....all you know is what is directly in front of you.
16) The gift of a carrot from a Canadian man towards the end of a 250 mile pilgrimage brought me to tears, and I’m not usually emotional in public.
Despite having a letter of support from the Pope and another from the Archbishop of Canterbury in my pack, what I remember most from that trip is the homeless man who bought me a pasty.......cherish what’s important.
What have you learned about medieval life by ‘doing’ rather than by ‘reading’."
