Watching the Joust at Hever Castle

Kai, being a teenager, doesn’t have a lot of interests beyond playing video games! There aren’t a lot of days out that feel like something he specifically would enjoy, so when he said he would like to see jousts, we went to one that same weekend. Then, when we saw a second joust happening at Hever Castle, we obviously went to that one as well. Hever Castle isn’t a castle we have visited before, but we did want to focus on the Joust so didn’t end up booking to see inside the castle. The grounds and gardens themselves are actually massive!

Hever Castle Grounds

When we arrived, we wanted to explore the grounds. You do get a map of all of Hever Castle which shows the massive grounds. As you walk around, there are so many tents set up, with people all dressed up from medieval times. You can ask them questions about what they have within their tents or about what’s going on in their lives, they reply in character. It was quite interesting to walk around and talk to these individuals. I was particularly interested in the tent which was cooking pears in while over a fire. They explained how long they’d been poaching. There are also lovely decorations from beautiful flower gardens to a lake to a pond.

The pond itself has boat rides on some days, with a steam powered boat or row boats. The fountains around the grounds look beautiful and it’s a lovely place for a walk. Amelia is really big into taking pictures of cute flowers, so she had a fantastic time walking along the statues and taking flower pictures close up. In the lake and flower area, there isn’t any of the tents set up, and instead there are often people in character walking around.

Hever Castle Joust

The joust itself at Hever Castle has most people sitting in field around the jousting area. There are some seats, but they are first come-first serve, cash only, and you’ll likely need to sit down early and wait around, which we weren’t into. Instead, we picked a fine spot on the field. There are speakers so that you can hear the king and the various people talking and announcing. This joust started off by getting all of the children to enter the field for a bit of a parade. This was lovely, everyone got some strange weapons and were told they were now loyal to the king. Then the games began.

The story itself had a lot of references to the modern day, with the king making references to modern music, video games, and stuff that’s happened in the last few years. It was interesting how different this was to the people who were walking around, sticking to their characters. The King himself was more of an announcer and host, instead of someone playing a role. There were a ton of activities in this joust, which Kai and Robin really enjoyed.

We watched them do classic jousting, hitting each other, but there were also sword fighting and just generally attacking each other. There was some sort of thing on the ground that the people riding horses would gallop by and then they’d stab the thing! Another, sort of new thing we’ve never seen had them stabbing their jousting poles through circle targets on poles in the sky, with the circles getting smaller and smaller each time. When it comes to the acting, Dann and I (as adults) did feel like the entire thing was a little too staged. Sometimes it felt like they just gave up, tossing their weapons to the side and then falling away wildly.

The King and Queen did stay at a photo area for a good chunk of time before the joust, which was good if you want a photo! We saw them walking around acting like the King and Queen afterwards as well, which was fun. Overall, we did enjoy the joust at Hever Castle and had a fun time seeing the grounds and activities. We also saw the falcon display, which seems to always be nearby if a joust is happening.

You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!