Rosie Niven thrashes with the Medieval Re-Enactment Society’s swords

So here I am, a usually mild mannered person, brandishing a five foot long bill hook (or spiky spear thing) about to do some serious damage to a Lancastrian footsoldier on a Yorkshire battlefield...OK, so I'm actually standing in the foundry, probably on the spot where somebody puked up in Pop Tarts the previous night, about to take part in the University Medieval Re-enactment Society's Sunday afternoon training session, but you can only dream...

1 was brought down to earth with a bump when the warm up started and I began to realise quite how unfit I actually was since I only manage three press ups in the time it took everyone else to do ten. The purpose of the warm up is to reduce the chance of injury, as is the use of gloves, and the imposition of rules which dictate where you make a 'hit'. Despite the potential risk of injury, one member, lan, told me that the vast majority of injuries were just broken fingernails and bruises. The main point of training is learning how to make 'hits' so it won't hurt too much when you do it for real in tournaments.

After my embarrassing display during training things picked up when I got the opportunity to wield a sword. Sword wizard Tim was enlisted to show me some simple cuts and blocks with a double handed sword. Holding a sword was quite different from what I expected, although good fun I didn't feel any rush of power to my head like a swashbuckling warrior such as myself should.

Although fiercely competitive, because re-enactors recreate battles, the winner is already decided as lan explains, "Most battles are scripted so if you’re told to lose you will lose but you can gain a moral victory over opponents. If you land more hits than they do, they'll acknowledge that you've beaten them but in the end you have to comply with the script and lose."

The University Medieval Re-enactment Society is affiliated to a larger organisation called the Neville Household which is part of the War of the Roses federation. The federation organises battles between different Households around the country, which specialise in the War of the Roses period.

The Nevilles fought mostly on the Yorkist side in the War of the Roses so if you're a Neville then Richard III is a good guy, and the Lancastrians are scum. There are also other Federations which specialise in other wars, you can get re-enactment groups for periods ranging from Celtic times to World War ll.

The medieval costumes I had expected also didn't materialise since they are only used during the summer tournaments but lan gave me some idea what the group wore. "All Neville's have got the same livery, white with what is called a ragged staff, which looks like a knobbly stick, on the back. It is based on the traditional livery of the Duke of Warwick who was a Neville."

lan remembers a time when they all went out in costume during a tournament at Appleby Castle, "there's a pub there, where we discovered that Landlord was a very devout Yorkist and when he found out who we were he got us all well drunk. It's just fun to dress up in strange clothes and be someone else for a while."