9 June 2014 updated at 00:35 by Tom Holland Belmonte, Spain dressing up in uniforms from the past and a pastime in many parts of Europe and North America is again operative battles. But until now there has never been a World Championship for medieval knights.
Standing over the large century battlements of Belmonte - a castle to striking medieval Hollywood epic El Cid starring Charlton Heston in the 1960s - it was filmed is the view still the Cervantes might have recognized.
The endless DUNS and khaki La Mancha are the same the Don Quixote of roamed his crackbrained looking for adventure.
I had seen on my South of Madrid, wind turbines, firm on the horizon and wondered whether also Cervantes Knight angry enough, such giants to calculate would have been.
Read the main story hear from our own correspondent for insight and analysis from BBC journalists, correspondents and authors from around the WorldBroadcast on Radio 4 on Saturdays and Thursdays at 11:30 BST and there is still wind mills BBC World Service but Belmonte. There are also monasteries and churches, stone gateways, and winding streets.
If you need to dress in armor, I suppose that it's so good to do a place like any other, it. That was good. I would come to visit, what great Belmonte was named the first International Medieval combat Federation World Championships.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting much. I had before ever battle memories and always found rather pointless.
Make my way through the castle to the tournament floor, I saw nothing at first to me to agree to.
In the chat on the phone dressed women as princesses,: check.
Men in Robin Hood caps: check. Striped refreshment tents selling Mead: check.
I'm ready to be bored, then definitely in my mild Hauteur justified, if not exactly.
I had it not more wrong.
An opening ceremony, which merged with game of Thrones Eurovision saw clad WAGs (wives and girlfriends) - national teams from as far afield as Japan and the United States parade steeply downhill from the Castle, followed by pages and Guimpe and then it was to the point.
And what company! I knew that I was wrong in my assumptions at the moment I find my first piece of the Knight Knight action under must: five massive French on five equal Sweden.
The action was a whole dimension of the staged minuet of battle memories.
It was a bit like rugby - played only in full armour. It was a bit like hockey - only with swords and maces. It was a bit like boxing - only with some form of contact, up to and including the enemy around the head with a pole-axe - smacking.
It was intense, it was intense, visceral, it was a sport. Thirty seconds, and I knew that I loved it.
I would come to Belmonte, which light could shed the staging of the fight in full armour on medieval tournaments today to explore.
The answer was much. When I spoke to the participants, I that they had come through an understanding realized by, what was it, fight in plate and helmet that could provide a lot of books.
But soon, I also realized that the championships on the fault of a very modern question were installed. The resurrection of the medieval battle started as a sport in Russia - had, and the Russians were notable for the absence of Belmonte. Was, I soon discovered an East-West divide.
"For the Russians, it goes to the win at all costs" the German captain, Adam Navrot, tells me, more in sorrow than in anger.
If not dress in pristine plate and Eagle-crested yellow tabard, Navrot runs a travel company in Berlin - but the medieval Norman kings of Sicily at the University studied and has a specialist fascination with chivalry.
I learned the Russians tend to be less sharp on the ideal of the knightly camaraderie. In the previous year, she had mocked the Poland, by swinging a regimental flag, decorated with hammer and sickle.
You had complained about the presence of Americans on the grounds in the United States had no medieval history.
You had once reached top managers fight through the fence of the area and Russian Knights fall from his belt around him on the ground prevent stopped. Overall, more Putin, then, as Sir Lancelot.
But Navrot and the other Knights of Belmonte, wanted to talk about it. You wanted the moment - to enjoy and I could blame not them.
As the Sun went under heraldic flags fluttered against the sky blood red and the lists were giant crowded each other with steel reinforced belabouring in the spirit of chivalrous friendship. Probably still not there a scene quite like it since the end of the middle ages.
Certainly, anything that I felt was very jealous. I would have given a lot, I realized, to participate. If only I found myself at the thought, I not quite so lanky and weed.
But then again - it never ceased to Don Quixote.
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