Yorkshire Tour Part 7 – Leeds & the Royal Armouries

Leeds – the final frontier to our Yorkshire Tour. I’d been to the Royal Armouries when I was at school but had never been back to have a proper investigate, so it fitted in quite nicely with the last day of our holidays as quelle surprise, the weather was in danger of launching into a full upside down smile so the indoor attractions were eagerly thrusting their hand in the air yelping, “Me, me, me…pick me! Pick me!”

The Royal Armouries was chosen as the where we should grace with our presence. Not having visited the Armouries since I was about 13, I returned wiser and more excited about seeing some cool swords and Gatling guns.

The Armouries is huge…so much so in fact, that we only saw half of it before we had to ‘assemble in the arena’ (more on that later). So we have loads more to see including the self defence section which hopefully has a display focussing on Jean Claude van Damme’s majestic roundhouse kick.

At the end of the ground floor is what is known as the Tower of Steel (or the Column of Cool as we knew it that day) and with just the 2,500 items I think it’s more than earned its name. What makes this part deserving of its Column of Cool name is the mirrors at the bottom that allow to, well, look up by looking forwards if that makes sense. It also makes for some great photo opps.

Here’s a fact for you too – there are over 8,000 items on display at any one time. And the amount of items in storage? 80,000.

The Hall of Steel goes right up to the top of the building and on our walk up allowed for what I consider to be the greatest ‘plank’ of the Tour.

If this was a TV talent show for planking, I imagine one of the judges would announce something along the lines, “That wasn’t just the best plank of the show…that was the best plank of the entire series. Well done, you HAVE to be here next week.” I’d then get through to the 2nd to last week before being voted off…probably citing a lack of versatility.

So what did we see? A lot of body armour including horsey head wear…

Some body armour (legs craftily added by Emily)…

A rather intense battle scene…

As well as loads of other items from daggers to the equipment of a modern soldier and a range of Tommy guns (which made me think of 90s cult classic The Mask) through to an area on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

As we were making our way to the Tower of Steel to continue to the next level we were stopped by two chaps asking if we wanted to go to a Horses in Action Stunt Show in 15 minutes so we grabbed a quick brew in the cafe and set off to see some Guns n Horses (pun author’s own).

On the way out to the Event Arena, we found time to create an illusion on a scale you wouldn’t imagine…this might look like we got dressed up in 16th century garb, but if you enter on your keyboard ‘up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A’, you’ll realise that we’ve actually just stuck our heads through a Royal Armouries photo board. Eat THAT David Blaine.

So, the event arena and the Horses in Action Stunt Show featuring Atkinson Action Horses…as we made ourselves outside, the heavens opened.
But using that traditional British grit that wins World Wars, we carried on (admittedly so did about 100 others so perhaps our tough guy ranking is ‘average’)…Emily was of course ecstatic to be getting soaked!

The Atkinson Action Horse actors were immense (it’s them in Robin Hood, The King’s Speech and Spielberg’s new one War Horse).
They rode upside down…

Rode on two horses…

All whilst doing the display in ‘non-ideal’ conditions…as proven by one of the riders slipping when he tried to stand on the saddle. The show lasted for about 30 minutes and was well worth the £5 for what was a jolly good giggle which was made more fun by the torrential rain…nothing was going to beat us today!

And just when we thought we’d seen it all, they made a horse sit like a dog.