Royal Armouries Leeds

we went on our first proper* holiday together  and decided to spend it at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. not a holiday in Leeds but a holiday at the Royal Armouries. we did our best to not find out too much about Leeds itself, just a couple of options for late afternoon once the museum was closed.

we travelled down on the Monday, spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the museum then travelled back on Thursday and it was great.

required Hall of Steel photo, i was very taken with this little pointy helmet.

and we met the iconic guy: 

spent a lot of time being so impressed by the craftsmanship of all the armour and especially the decoration and also when you can really see like, a guy drew that. that's a drawing someone did on metal hundreds of years ago and it's incredible to just see a centuries old drawing.

the living history team are so. good. we saw a longbow talk, celt vs roman combat, pollaxe combat and two handed sword combat and they were all incredible. literally can't believe this museum is free it's amazing.

also look at his painted helmet <3

this painted helmet is from 1490 and i love it very much.

when we got kicked out of the armoury museum we went and found the hoist museum which was very cute and i'm so glad it's there in amongst all the newer buildings.

and then we went and found Doner Summer for vegan kebabs (which we took back to the hotel). these were so good, for a very long time i'm going to be like oh i fancy one of those kebabs and ah i can't get one i'm not in Leeds.

beautiful beautiful beautiful. i also love how on this one on the left you can still see the blue. sometimes the metal was heated to a certain temperature and it went blue which goes nice with the gold. so fancy.

panels on a skirt from armour made for Henry VIII which has that amazing wow someone drew that feeling to it and it was made in a rush and there's a mistake** in there which is just incredible i love it.

most of the time looking at the helmets i don't see something that a human would be inside i just see a creature, like the helmet is their head, and some of them lend themselves to it even more than others.

when we got kicked out on our second day we walked along the river and saw house martins flitting about catching bugs which was amazing and then the reason we'd walked along there was to see the back of the train station which has this cool building and river going underneath it and it looks like something out of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken.

very pleased with our gift shop haul and also i don't know if this Yorkshire iced tea is only available in Yorkshire or if it's new everywhere and we only saw it for the first time there but it was fun to have a local delicacy.

it was a great trip, we basically ate meal deals and looked at armour, i took so many more photos than this and we ordered a nice fancy book from the gift shop that we couldn't fit in our bags. we made sure to go past and stop at various places on the journey there and back, tank car park, Newark castle, Pontefract castle, Conisbrough castle. first holiday well done.

*we camped at a bike festival one year and the year after that we booked a travelodge for the trip back from the festival and then the festival got cancelled but we drove out and stayed in the travelodge anyway but i'm not sure any of that counts as "going on holiday"

**on the left photo there's a panel in the middle that should be blank