Battle Of Maldon

   A slight to the current painting projects;

Statue of Earl Byrthnoth

   A week ago - at the point of typing - we booked a Friday off work and decided to take our little boy to Colchester zoo while it was still fairly quiet and with the weather being good and us leaving the zoo to give him a car nap in the early afternoon, we were planning how to spend the rest of the afternoon when we saw a sign for Maldon and I mentioned that it was a battlefield I would quite like to visit. . .

The towards the causeway to Northey Island where the Vikings had landed.

The probably battlefield as the closest land to the causeway, although with how wet and marshy the whole are is I'm not sure I'd like to have a fight there.

   Like my other battlefield posts, I'm not going to try and describe the battle or explain the motivations as I'm just not qualified when there are so many better places to get that sort of information, but it's always weirdly moving to go to battlefields and see how the terrain affected the events. In this case, I can totally see why the English Earl Byrthnoth, let the Vikings off of the island instead of either trapping them in or taking the fight to them, the land around the causeway is horrible, even with the modern raised path, you are much better off letting them come to you. It's just a pity it didn't work.

   This is very much a battle I've had my eyes on recreating, so much so that I have a specific bit of scenery made for it by Last Valley, so keep your eyes open in the future*.

*Just torn whether to go 28mm or 15mm

   Also as a side note, the path to the battlefield is not at all pram friendly . . .

Thanks for reading