Hi I'm Dan, I'm the head of Historia Normannis. For this year we're throwing on some Roman
kit and we're bringing Clash of Romans.
It involves lots of Romans unsurprisingly and it does involve quite a lot of clashing.
There's training and it involves quite a grueling schedule, I mean it can be up to sort of four
or five hours. It's mostly combat orientated, but there's other bits as well like showmanship.
Because it's no good hitting each other if it doesn't look like it really hurts.
They're aiming to strike hard enough to leave a lovely bruise and have to react accordingly
to show how powerful that was.
The only way to get that is to go out into a field with sticks and get yourself bruised.
Sort of the basis of the event is two groups of Auxiliaries training against each other.
It's truly competitive it isn't we've scripted it and discussed it.
We do a competition - first with javelins. So we throw javelins at each other team. Hits
on shield hits on people count as points.
It's great fun for us and the audience love it.
It's very much competition sport - is the best way to explain it.
It's a lot of fun and we thoroughly enjoy putting on the display for people.
There's quite a lot of hitting each other, quite a lot of knocking people over. We use
wooden Gladiai because we try not to kill each other too much.
This allows us to be a bit more free in the combat because we can give each other a bit
more of a whollop.
Shield bashing and kicking is allowed - safety done of course.
We allow bashing to the ground which makes the combat look very visceral.
It's not just a sense of they're seeing a battle - they're really seeing guys really
try and hit each other so you get a real sense of what a soldiers training would have looked
like all that time ago.
As a combatant it's a hell of a lot of fun.
The buzz you get from the audience as well as being a spectator - everyone is on the
edge of their seats just waiting for initial impact of one team smashing into the other.
Once it happens it's just an uproar of cheers - it's amazing. It's one of those things you
have to be there to be able to feel and experience what it's actually like.