Great news – the excellent and very dedicated folks at the Nottingham Royal Society for the Blind are holding another Bonfire Night Charity Firewalk at Nottingham Castle on November 5th!

Myself and Maid Marian are going to be helping out and leading the walk as we did last year so if you wanted to come and join in now’s the time – it’s fantastic fun, very empowering and best of all it’s for a great cause!

Last year everyone who took part or watched helped to raise the magnificent sum of over £20,000 for the NRSB and this year we’re hoping to beat that - you can check out the details and sign up to take part here or just buy spectator tickets to come and add to the fun!

There’s also music, a great fireworks display and good food to be had too and honestly, if you’ve never tried it before please do; it’s not painful at all, I promise – see the expression on my face taken at last year’s event? That’s exhilaration, not pain!

And if you fancy making a night of it you can join us afterwards in supporting the opening night of the Victoria Cross Memorial Beer Festival that evening at the Canalhouse pub on Canal Street, Nottingham where they’re hosting a beer festival 5th-8th Nov 2009 to help raise money for the VC memorial fund which aims to have a memorial erected in Nottingham Castle grounds to remember the 20 Nottinghamshire men who have been awarded this medal for bravery. This memorial will ensure permanent recognition and ensure these heroes are never forgotten.

There’ll be 20+ real ales all with a military theme and they’ve teamed up with the comedy festival to have comedians performing Thurs & Fri and live music by the superb Nimming Ned on Sat. There’ll also be selling raffle tickets as a way of raising money with the chance to win some superb prizes (list will be available at a later date, check out the Victoria Cross Memorial Beer Festival Facebook Group for more information).

One great night out, two fabulous causes – see you there!

Last Thursday saw the opening of the 2009 Robin Hood Beer Festival at Nottingham Castle and Sunday saw it closing slightly earlier than planned – drunk completely dry of beer by the thousands of very happy real ale, beer and cider fans who flocked through the gates in record-breaking numbers.

Bigger and better than last year, CAMRA and the Castle staff had organised a really well run festival with food, music, a great atmosphere and, of course, a truly vast array of beers!

 As well as helping open it myself and the good Lady Marian (the ever lovely Sal Chappell) were also judges in the CIBA Beer Competition, and helpfully we were given the Strong Beer category to judge, starting at 11.30am! Fifteen very fine (well, mostly fine) strong beers to examine, smell, taste and then rate was a tough job, but we made a sterling effort! After a short break we then moved on to judging the Pale Ale and Bitters category, luckily not as alcoholic but just as much fun! All of the winning beers were most excellent but I was very pleased to see that Nottingham’s excellent Castle Rock Brewery did very well again, buit congratulations to all of the entrants and winners!

We stayed all day so also got to meet loads of great festival-goers including some fabulous folks from Australia and a great bunch of guys from Ethiopia – it just goes to show what a great draw the festival is for Nottingham and CAMRA – here’s to a great one this year and a bigger one next as well! Cheers!

There’s a great review of the festival by Nottingham Evening Post author (and all round decent chap) Erik Petersen here. 

(The photo shows SIBA chief executive Julian Grocock, Adrian Redgrove (head brewer, Castle Rock Brewery), the Sheriff of Nottingham Cllr Leon Unczur, Maid Marian (Sally Chappell) and Robin Hood (me) as the award is presented to Castle Rock Brewery – from whom I have shamelessly snaffled the photo - for their excellent first place winning Black Gold dark mild beer).

A couple of weeks ago Nottingham Castle hosted the Big Wheel, a free festival celebrating Nottingham’s public transport initiative designed to raise awareness of buses, trams, cycles and cycle routes and, of course, feet.

 There were loads of stalls, attractions and displays on show, including book sharing, recycling, food and a medieval village recreated by the Dogs of War.

I was there as Robin Hood, and this time I bought a couple of friends, both of whom you can see in the photo – Felicity the Falcon, perched carefully on my arm and Barry the Hedgehog, who you might just be able to make out sitting on my right shoulder.

They were both a great hit with all the visitors (and the Castle says there were about 20,000 of them), especially the younger ones, and were thankfully very well behaved, partially due to my intensive training techniques, but also because they’re both stuffed toys!

The day afterwards was a lot calmer, still spent up at the Castle practising sword-fighting and learning a lot (including how much I need to practice more) from Adam, my old friend from live-roleplaying and banquet days who now runs KDF, a group dedicated to researching and teaching genuine medieval combat techniques, something very different from what I do.

The photo is one of many excellent pics taken by (and used with kind permission of) the lovely Julie from DesignCat, thanks very much Jules!     

I’ve just got back from a Robin Hood Beer Festival promo photoshoot up at Nottingham Castle with the Sheriff, the Nottingham Knights and a lot of very good beer!

As well as Colin Wilde from Castle Rock Brewery there was the ever-lovely Rosie, landlady of the Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn (in a very fetching medieval costume) and some gentlemen from CAMRA too. We had an impromptu beer-tasting session as well as posing for some pics and from the looks of it this year’s festival will be even bigger and better than last year!

It all starts at 11am this coming Thursday, when Sal Chappell and I will be helping to open it – and judge in some of the categories too. That’s a lot of beer drinking, and sadly we’ll have to be on our best behaviour later on too as we’ll be welcoming a lot of VIP guests to a special evening dinner as well. That should be fun…

I was Robin Hood-ing at Trent Bridge cricket ground again yesterday for another Twenty20 Cup match, this time the Nottingham Outlaws vs. Yorkshire Carnegie. 

As it was my second appearance I had slightly more idea what I was doing thankfully and the crowd was great, good fun and very friendly – I was even given a nice sun hat by a friendly fan (not that it was overly sunny, mind you)!

The match was being covered by Sky Sports 2 so I was featured during the match (the commentators wondering how I managed to get in to the ground armed to the teeth, apparently) and taking part in the presentation and autograph signings at the end!

Even stranger though, after the game when I was driving home I was repeatedly hooted at by another driver – and I had no idea why – I was pretty sure my car was OK, and when we stopped at lights I wound down my window to see what he wanted - and he  told me he’d just seen me on the TV and wanted to say ‘hello’ !

I gave up firebreathing a few years ago, appropriately enough at the final show ever of The Sheriff’s Lodge, the Nottingham medieval banqueting centre I worked at for for fifteen-odd years. 

I gave it up for health reasons, frankly filling your mouth full of a foul-tasting carcinogen (paraffin) isn’t good for you at all, even before you set fire to it!

Weirdly though ‘setting fire to my head’ wasn’t one of the reasons, but as you can see here in a short series of photos taken at Warwick Castle a few years ago it can happen!

It was quite a windy day and exactly as I blew the fire a strong gust brought the flame straight back onto my face, burning hair and eyebrows and even welding my eyelashes together – luckily I didn’t need the extinguisher I had with me but it was still quite scary – although as soon as I turned back to the shocked audience most of the children began to scream "Do it again, do it again!"  The little darlings…

Wow, now this is good news indeed!

This coming Tuesday there’s a special charity ‘Can’t Stop the Serenity’ screening of Joss Whedon’s excellent sci-fi movie SERENITY in Nottingham, in aid of ‘Equality Now’ .

I love Serenity (and Firefly, the short-lived TV series it was based on)  and watching a great movie and supporting a good cause at the same time has to be a winner!

The Nottingham screening will be held in room A48 of the Sir Clive Granger Building on the University of Nottingham’s University Park Campus, on Tuesday June 16th, starting at 6.30pm (doors open at 6pm). SERENITY will be follow by Joss Whedon’s hit web series ‘Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ with a short break in between. Tickets cost £5, all profits go straight to Equality Now! More details HERE!

I’ve been sorting through my old photo archives and thought I should start to post a few from ‘back in the day’ – in this case it’s a photo of me firebreathing at Peckforton Castle in Cheshire.

Even before I started Robin Hood-ing I used to travel (and for a brief while even live) at the castle, for several years it was the home of ‘Treasure Trap’ a live-roleplaying company which allowed thousands of like-minded folks to dress up and live out medieval/fantasy adventures and combat. I had (and still have) a suit of japanese samurai armour I used to wear there. It’s also where I got my Blue Peter badge!

This photo was taken quite a few years after that, as I carried on working at Peckforton for many years performing at medieval banquets, weddings and (in this case) fun days!

What a fabulously fun morning! Yesterday the lovely Sal Chappell and I were at Waterstones bookshop in Nottingham with the extremely talented (and equally lovely) photographer and author Sarah Davis who was launching her excellent book ‘Nottingham – City Beautiful’, a wonderful photo-guide to the famous and not-so well known parts of the city, all taken in the past year (including photos of myself and Sal at last year’s Robin Hood Pageant, which is why we were there).

We were also joined by the Lord Mayor of Nottingham, Councillor Jeannie Packer (who used to be the city’s Sheriff) and her husband along with loads of people buying copies of the book to have signed by Sarah. 

Here’s hoping the book does as well as it deserves and many thanks to Sarah and her friends and family for making it such a memorable and enjoyable time!