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Jousting - Geoff Funnell

Different people decide to ride for different reasons. Geoff Funnell – No relation to you know who – decided to ride because he wanted to take up jousting.

“The children insisted on taking me to the Herstmonceaux Medieval Festival. I didn’t want to go. I thought it would be people playing at being knights in armour. That kind of thing. I only went there on sufferance.
“But when I saw the jousting I sat there intrigued. I was mesmirised. I told my wife, I’m going to do that.”

And he did.
He went to Ditchling Common Stud, which is run by John Dudeney. He sat him on Joker, a 17 hh Draught x Thoroughbred. “It was the first horse I had ever sat on,” says Geoff. “I ached like hell.”

But learning to ride was only part of the problem. Geoff also had to learn to fight. He joined the Medieval Siege Society. Before long he was fighting Medieval style in shows and tournaments not only all over this country but throughout Europe as well.“I was sore. I was bruised. I was aching everywhere.

But I thoroughly enjoyed it,” he says, “Because I knew the sooner I learnt to fight on foot the sooner I would learn to joust “

As if learning to ride and learning to fight Medieval-style wasn’t enough Geoff also decided to start making his own armour.
“I did a lot of research,” he says. “I studied all the books I could find on armour. I went to all the military museums. I went to the V and A. I went to museum at the Tower of London.”
While he was doing all this, he was still learning to ride and fighting in shows and tournaments.
“I’m still not a very good rider,” he says. “But I found that jousting improves your riding. Somehow it makes you more confident. When you see someone coming towards you with a sword or a lance in his hand you stop worrying about riding and concentrate on trying to defend yourself. It concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

Geoff’s first jousting tournament came in February 2007.

“It was at Windsor. No, not Windsor Castle. Just outside Windsor. In a field somewhere. I did OK. I scored a number of breaks of the lance. Every time you break someone’s lance you score some points. So I was alright.”
Real jousting, he also discovered, was nothing like jousting Hollywood style.

“First, the horses."

Everybody thinks they are sleek, beautiful thoroughbreds. They’re not. Because of the weight they have to carry, the knight, the armour, everything, the ideal horse for jousting is a short, stocky horse, say, a 15.2 Persheron. Hunters are must too big.

“The horse has also got to be trained for jousting. Some horses will take one look at the armour the knight is wearing and turn and run. Others don’t take any notice. The horses have also got to get used to being ridden very fast, for very short distances and then be able to pull up very quickly. The horses that like jousting just love it. They cant wait to get started”.

Making the armour also takes a great deal of training and practice.
“So far, I’ve made three whole sets of armour,” he says. “As well as a whole mixture of arms and legs and breast plates. Both for myself as well as for other people.”
Different suits and styles of armour are made of different types of steel and in different ways. A suit made of mild steel can cost around £6,000. A suit made of spring steel can cost anything between £18,000 and £25,000. To fully equip a horse with armour can cost between £10,000 and £20,000.
“Everything takes time,” Geoff explains. “To make a breastplate out of carbon steel, to cut it, to grind it, to hot forge and shape it and to hammer it into shape can take 20 hours. And that’s just the breastplate.”

The weight of a full suit of armour is , interestingly, around 85 lbs, about the same weight as the kit worn today by modern soldiers when they go into battle.
So was it all worthwhile?
“Definitely,” says Geoff. “Jousting is the biggest 30-second adrenalin rush I know.”

 

Soooo Are you ready?

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