Celtic Fair

Have you ever been to a Celtic Fair? We hadn’t but when we saw a flyer for one in Cortez, CO we decided to check it out.

Parque de Vida in downtown Cortez is an amazing park. There are a billion soccer fields, baseball diamonds, a pond, pickelball and tennis courts, a skate park, a bmx park, playgrounds, a recreation center, and more. This is where the Celtic Fair took place on a hot and sunny day. There were a lot of booths, food trucks, beer, some bands, and all sorts of competitions.

We missed the Highlands Dance Competition but we watched the sheaf toss for quite a while. A pitchfork is used to hurl a burlap bag stuffed with straw over a horizontal bar above the competitor’s head. The bag of straw weighs 16 pounds! Each competitor is given three chances cleanly heft the bag over the bar. After all challengers have made their attempts, the bar is raised and all successful competitors move on to the new height. This continues until all but one athlete is eliminated. We watched until only one was left – he topped out at 25 feet.

Next we watched the Westwind Pipes and Drum Band playing the bagpipes and, well, drums. Bagpipes seem so hard to play. The next attraction was armored combat. This a combat sport developed by the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in which participants in protective body armour compete in mock combat inspired by forms of historical combat, and tournament combat practiced in medieval Europe. This seemed like a really hot sport in the summer. These guys and gals dressed up in full armor and battled until only one is left standing. If you get knocked over you have to stay down. Most of the matches ended by someone wrestling someone else down to the ground. Still though, there were some heavy collisions. Watch the video and you’ll see.

After a few hours in the sun we called it a day. The best part about this event is it’s a fundraiser for the local food pantry so all the beer proceeds went to a good cause.