The third Crescent Fence was held in Darton (after the first in Southron Gaard and the second in Ildhafn). A diverse range of giocatore from around the Crescent Isles attended, plus (Guild Master!) Tariq ibn Jelal (ibn etc) and Juliana Northwood from Terra Rossa. On Saturday Thomas and Ibn Jelal taught 17th C Italian rapier. IJ's teaching of stringere was subtlly but importantly different to what I had previously learned (or rather, I think Emrys was trying to tell me something I hadn't really understood) and Thomas was very patient with my feeble attempts to gain stringere on him. IJ then gave a couple of excellent classes on Bolognese swordsmanship, which I had been really looking forward to. As well as filling a couple of the gaps I found in trying to re-construct the plays from Manciolino, it's given me a few thoughts about Meyer (btw, ibn Jelal also pointed out Meyer's grip to me).
Sunday there was a lesson on 17th C Spanish fencing (Ettenhard) from Juliana. This is a famously simple system that is infamously difficult to master. I had a couple of rather fun bouts with Kjartan and his new Darkwood katana (does not behave like a straight blade!) and Gordon who, I fear, started out trying to make life hard for me and finished struggling to make life easily enough :) There was a great deal of fencing, using both rapier and side-sword rules with fencers of all abilities. I was particularly pleased to see how much longsword has taken off. Just holding one brings a grin to my face. Ibn Jelal helped me work on my lunge and Juliana gave me valuable tips on facing someone using a dagger (Baron Giles had inflicted this on me during my Freescholar's prize - he won't find it so amusing next time....)
In between all the activities there was time for geeking-out about all things historical fencing, including home videos of IJ training from 10 years ago (does that count as historical?) Thanks a lot to Thomas for setting this up; Helen, Kjartan, Bethany and Gordon for the rides; and Bernard for his hospitality. The rotation puts the next one in Southron Gaard -- I'm looking forward to it already.