I wasn't able to attend much of the preparations on Friday. We had someone come over at home to install bathroom cupboards and the like. When I arrived on the festival terrain, it was raining. Hard. Pluvius kept this up pretty much until Saturday morning at 10, just before the Festival was to open. From then on we had pretty much unbroken nice and actually sunny weather. I actually managed to get me a red neck!

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones when the reenactment groups ànd visitors arrived to make our festival a success. But for me there is no question about the high-point of the festival. That came last Sunday morning at 10 AM, an hour before the first visitors arrived. All modern equipment was removed from the wall area. The generator powering machinery, freezers and other amenities was turned off. Modern clothing was banned from the area and men of Corbvlo, Legio X Gemina, Legio XI Claudia and the Römercohorte Opladen took up the construction of the wall and ditch. Very atmospheric and awesome to see. Not anything I've seen before, very rare elsewhere (if it's happened at all) and certainly unique in that it was being built on the exact site of an actual Roman camp.

The guys of X Gemina, lead by Marc Sanders (who also made our promo video) taped it all while I took my photos and I'm really eager to see the end result (although not necessarily myself, who they insisted had to be the talking head explaining what was going on...).

Always impressive: Romans on the march

Even though we used the cheaper (than oak) norway spruce, the 20 foot posts were quite heavy.

Proper make-up completes the picture...

'Cordvs' of Corbvlo provided the necessary encouragement as the grumpy centurio.

Many hands make light work.





We found that the yokes usually needed some gentle convincing with a sledgehammer.

Marc shooting the scene

The X Gemina impromptu production team: Marc, Henk-Jan and Oscar.

Sunday evening the entire construction had to be torn down again. All that now remains is the hobnailed footprints and a dent in the terrain where the ditch used to be. The future looks promising however. The burgomaster and city elders, who all visited the festival, seemed very enthusiastic. Of course it remains to be seen whether that translates into support for our plans, but it sounds good.