road trip, Double Wars, road trip

The adventure started Thursday, the week before last. While I should have spent that day working I instead spent most of it packing and organizing stuff to load into the car that evening when lord_kjar got home from work. I am glad that I did, because even so we didn't have the car loaded and ready to go till nearly midnight that night, so we took an hour nap and then started driving just after 02:00.

Sweden is a long country--we live well to the north, but not all the way to the top. Double Wars is held way down south, but not quite all the way to the bottom. It takes a long time to drive that far. GoogleMaps says it should be 15 hours and 10 minutes of driving time to get from our house to the site. We sometimes drove slower than the speed limit (roof rack!), and on the trip south we stopped a total of 19 times. Since my phone has an app that makes it easy to log stuff I kept a record of every time we stopped and started again. Therefore I have added up the totals. ( Here is the summary of our journey/break times )

Despite the frequent breaks (no single driving session was longer than 1 hour 35 minutes) we were both quite tired when we arrived on site. However, we arrived around 07:00 Friday morning, which was a fine time to select a camp site and set up the pavilion and sun shade.

I had expected to nap once camp was set up, but I got distracted with entertaining conversations and would up staying up till just after 21:00 that night. However, I then slept happily through to 07:00 (well, unless you count one mid-night toilet trip), which got me mostly rested and recovered from the journey and ready to enjoy the event.

Double Wars is an interesting event—it runs for two weekends and the week in between, but the number of people on site gradually grows during the first week until it maxes out on the final Friday. This year the event was a bit smaller than the last couple of years—everyone is assuming this is because a number of people were forced to choose between either attending this one or the Drachenwald 20-year Anniversary event later this summer, and many people choose that one (though I don’t think that lord_kjar and I were the only ones to choose Double Wars over 20 Year). In particular I noticed far fewer people from the UK and Germany than in other years, though there were still a decent number of Germans on site. On the other hand, there were at least four visitors from the US this year.

There were a large number of classes offered this year that looked interesting, but I didn’t manage to attend very many of them, since I kept getting distracted by interesting conversations. The first couple of days of the event I spoke a fair bit of Swedish with people, and was quite pleased that I could do so, even though I am still far from fluent. However, as the event progressed, and more non-Swedish speaking people arrived on site, I found myself involved in more and more English conversations, which is certainly easier on me, but somehow feels like I am cheating.

Like all good SCA events there was plenty of time for me to work on sewing and nålbinding projects, there was dancing, singing, and mostly just visiting with people. He participated in the archery, and I was kind of happily aware of people doing fencing and heavy combat in the background (we made no attempt to bring my armour, which I haven’t used since hurting my back last August, because it simply wouldn’t fit into our small car).

I didn’t bring my computer and made no attempt to work for the entire ten days we were gone. Neither did I check in to read LJ or FB, though I did look at the few emails that arrived in my in-box to see if they were important, since my phone tells me when they arrive, and I looked at my phone whenever I entered more food eaten into my food log. Instead the rhythm of the day involved waking up, tidying up the pavilion (hanging up yesterday’s clothes properly, instead of leaving them hanging over the rafters, making the bed, etc.), going for a walk, or hanging out and being social, or attending classes before lunch, then joining the others for the soup lunch.

This year the catering was being done by a professional, who fed us soup and bread for lunch each day—this was the one part of the meal plan I bought into—I brought my own muesli from home for breakfasts, and for my other meals I had also brought veggie pasties, “everything cake—a not very sweet baked thing I invented that has lots of different nuts and dried fruit in it, as well as a variety of different grains, oat cakes, raspberry tarts, cheese, fresh fruit, and carrots. Between snacking on these things at random intervals during the day and the provided lunches I did just fine for food.

After lunch each day there was more time for socializing (while working on projects), or attending classes, or going for walks before the evening meal. While I didn’t buy into the meal (it was served starting at 18:00, and I prefer to have by dinner earlier than that) plan my camp mates did, so I would always sit with them and work on sewing projects, and then we would go add warmer clothes for the evening.

We were very lucky with the weather this event. While the nights did get cold enough that I was glad to own a fur lined hood and wool tunics, it didn’t freeze at night, and the days were usually quite comfortable. It did get up over 20 C one day, but not painfully so. It did rain one night early on, but not till after I was asleep, and if I hadn’t seen everything wet in the morning I wouldn’t have known, since it didn’t make enough noise to wake me. Other than that it stayed partially cloudy/partially sunny all week, and only sprinkled on us slightly after we had taken down our pavilion and we were loading stuff into the car at the end of the event. Note that in Skåne (southern Sweden) spring was already well advanced—the grass we camped on was green, bushes were sending out leaves, and there were a fair few trees in flower before we left site. Up here it is still early spring—while nearly all of the snow in the yard has melted (save for where it was piled high after shovelling), the grass hasn’t yet gone green again, and the trees are only hinting at the fact that they might grow leaves. However, we don’t have much dark at night anymore—yes, the sun sets, but quite late, and it rises again quite early, so we don’t really have stars anymore. At the event I saw stars every night and always marvelled at them—to me they are supposed to be a winter phenomenon, not to be seen while the grass is green.

The event officially lasts till Sunday, but that day the only thing on the schedule is “clean site”, and we couldn’t stay that long. Instead we broke camp Saturday during the day, and loaded stuff into the car as soon as the battles for the war itself were over and we could bring the car up to the parking lot near the tent again (everyone had to move their cars from there before the battle, because the fighters wanted it for a playground). However, that got us to nearly dinner time, and court was scheduled for right after dinner, so we stayed on site till after court.

This meant that we started the drive home just after eight pm Saturday, and we got home just after nine pm on Sunday. We unloaded the car and put away the crucial stuff (emptied the ice chest, put the pillows back on the bed, plugged in phones and related stuff to be charged, etc.), took a shower, and got to bed before midnight.

I opted to work from home this morning, and, during the morning, actually managed to be productive and do work stuff. However, I took a break for lunch, during which I started reading ten days of LJ, and then I took a nap, and since then I have been happily distracted with finishing reading LJ, adding up the hours spent doing what on the journey, writing this post, baking bread, and generally taking it easy. So easy I opted not to join lord_kjar for nyckelharpa class tonight, which has given me a chance to finish typing this. Now I need to decide if I am going to go for a walk, return to uni work (lots of windows still open from that!), go practice nyckelharpa and/or hammer dulcimer on my own, start some event laundry, put away the stuff that is still sitting in the downstairs hallway after the event, or what… Somehow I doubt I have time to do it all before yoga and bed time.

Reading LJ today reminds me that I sometimes miss living in the West and attending events pretty much every weekend, but, honestly, comparing my week+ at Double Wars (with its nice, mild, weather, and no wind to speak of) with the descriptions I have read of Beltane, and I am grateful that I live in Drachenwald!

On the other hand, I do miss being able to be more active on a Kingdom and Principality level. People kept asking if we will be at 20-year (nope—not only can we not afford two major trips this summer, it falls into the wrong half of the summer for him to be able to take the time off of work—his company splits summer in two—half take their vacation in the first part, the others in the second part, and the following year they switch) or Visby Medieval week. The Medieval week is very, very tempting—not only is it a fun event in itself, it is also the site of the Nordmark Coronet tournament this year, and I would dearly love to make it. However, my body doesn’t really want another long journey again so soon, and we have lots of things we would like to do with the house that we wouldn’t be able to if we spent that much cash on a second major road trip, to say nothing of the time that wouldn’t be available for things like making the yard useable for camping events and putting in an archery range. Therefore we have decided that Double Wars is our only long-distance event this year.