Historical places near me...

[carvel2]

@ Fury...ace never heard of that. Brilliant battle/legend.
@ Mike...'Dag the Fat' has to be the best name listed

[Invisible officer]

@Fury, what a great idea for a battle. But only the most crazy maniacs have shieldmaidens to game with.

[Fury]

Nice shieldmaidens! Are those from Foundry?

[Invisible officer]

Yes, they are from the Foundry range.

[Fury]

Nice. I've been thinking about painting some Vikings for skirmish games now that SAGA is about to be released by Gripping Beast. I'm afraid huge battles will have to wait.

[red]

Well I'm stuck in North Wales, on the big tourist sites there are the Castles of Edward 1st at Ruddlan, Conwy and Carnarvon.
There is the ruins of a Welsh fortress opposite Conwy at Deganwy.
The Roman crossing was further upstream and defended by a fortress on the west bank at Tal Y Cafn.
The Mulberry Harbours were partially constructed at Conwy Morfa.
The RN Naval gunnery school was relocated during WW2 to the west flank of the Great Orme.
Sir Henry Morgan, (Pirate/Privateer/Governor of Jamaica/Distiller of very good rum) came from Rhos on Sea and his cottage in now a pub called the Fynnach.

[clivethecelt]

mikeland wrote: bezerkers fighting bears

Bit of an aside - my father's RAF squadron were based in Calcutta for a while towards the end of WW2, and some of the men bought a black bear cub, which they would wrestle with. When the squadron transferred to Singapore at the end of the war, they flew it to Seletar (on Singapore) in the back of a Mosquito. The berserker spirit lives on!

@ red: Spent ages at Beaumaris on a visit last year; really good - though, as you say, N Wales is fantastic for castle-exploring!

[Comte Michel]

Well there's nothing much close to where I live in Bournemouth apart from the Dunkirk and D-Day points of departure. But I lived and worked in Brussels for a while so Waterloo was my local battlefield and was well worth several visits. The Lion Mound is a monstrous carbuncle though, as our dear Loonie Prince Charlie would say.

I also spent some time in Spain, and my girlfriend's family lived in Talavera de la Reina. Never managed to visit the battle site there though so I don't know if there's much to see.

[Sirius]

Think I might be trotting out some fairly rare ones on this board:

Currently living a stones throw from Blaauwberg Hill (1806).
Recently lived on the slopes of Muizenberg (1795).
Previously lived a two blocks up from York Street (IIRC, the final settler defence line), Grahamstown (1819)
Previously lived less than a kilometer from the concentration camp site, Pietermaritzburg (1901)

Ok so, the last one wasnt a battle site, but was a significant consequence of Kitchener's strategy, and as much a place of loss and sorrow as any of the war's battle sites...

Guess you cant really live anywhere in South Africa without tripping over some or other colonial battlefield...

I have been privileged to be able to visit quite a few of the major Zulu and Boer war sites - Elandslaagte, Colenso, Ladysmith, Talana, Spionkop, Majuba, Isandlwana, Ulundi, Eshowe, Modderrivier, Majersfontein, and many sites of lesser-known battles, skirmishes etc from the conflicts in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

[Centurio Cunibus]

Nowadays living in Wageningen, central in the Netherlands, which means it's close to various important WWII places (and in this very city the German surrender was signed), although besides that, in all honesty.. it doesn't interest me all too much.
Why guns and tanks when you can have swordfights and archery? Luckily this also happens to be the very region in which the Batavian revolt raged, south of here was the so-called 'Island of the Batavians' (Betuwe) and a bit to the east, in Germany, lies the Roman city of Xanten which was razed by the angry Germanics. Has partial reconstructions of the walls, many towers, an amphitheatre, temple and a nice museum these days with quite a lot of finds from mostly Roman but also some pre- and post-Roman times.
To the west lies Wijk bij Duurstede, or Dorestad as it was called in Medieval times, important trading site and as such raided various times by Vikings. Nice museum there as well, hope to visit it today.

Fury: That is rather awesome;
"According to legend, Harald Wartooth realised that he was growing old (150) and may die of old age and so never go to Valhalla. He consequently asked Sigurd if he would let him leave this life gloriously in a great battle."
...
"When Harald had observed these heroic feats, he stood on his knees in his chariot with one sword in each hand and killed a great many warriors both to his left and to his right. After a while, Harald's steward Bruni deemed that his liege had amassed enough glory and crushed the king's skull with a club."
Why does it matter whether anything like this really happened, it's an excellent story.