A Walk Around Britain

We are here singing at the Faversham Hop Festival, at a gig in the Gulbenkian, Canterbury, supporting Chris Wood, and at a Christmas party.

These songs are being sung in times between walking, in our home territories.

This is a shorter edit of the documentary filmed by Molly King while we were in Cornwall.

The longer version of this film won an RTS Award and was shown on BBC South. To view the 15 minute version : Part 1 & Part 2

In Marazion, beside St Michael’s Mount, after 6 months walking in 2007 we are here, in friendly amateur combat.

The rules are simple: Tap the leg of your opponent, beneath the knee, keeping two hands on your staff, and stopping your opponent from tapping your leg.

You need space, a disposition not lent to tidal aggressiveness, and a good pair of stout staffs.

The singing is from a recording made in a family’s music room in Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, some 2 months earlier.

We discovered ankle-tap only a few weeks before, in a little town called Lostwithiel. It was probably devised as a ‘format’, and not a spontaneous childrens’ game, in the years following the Norman invasion of Britain, when Saxons were denied from carrying weapons. This is the historic context that gave rise to Capoiera, and Escrima, in Brazil and the Phillipines.

Ankle-tap. It’s a good sport, and rarely causes more than a bruise on the shin.

BUT: legally, with all social reponsibility in mind, no-one should ever do anything they learnt from the internet, and no-one should do anything without their parents, an MP, doctor, and minister of religion, being present in a democratic and CCTV’d manner.

Don’t do anything at home; especially not the ancient fun game of Ankle Tap.