World Conker Championship

Yep you read the title right... World Conker Championship. Conkers are the British version of acorns. The roads to Brittney & Sophie's school is lined with Conker trees, so in October we spend our walk time to & from school picking up Conkers. And supposedly spiders do not like Conkers, so if you line your window seal with conkers the spiders won't come into your house. Now I am no fan of spiders, but I am not lining my window seals to find out if this works.

Sunday the roads in our village were closed due to a marathon so our church service was cancelled as well. Kevin & I were determined NOT to be stuck at the house all day so we got up early (well early for a Sunday morning) and headed off before the roads closed at 10:30am. We were off to the World Conker Championship in Ashton UK.

Last years winner paraded around with a huge conker necklace and a conker cane which came complete with a beer holder.

The participants and their supports dressed in some pretty interesting fashion (keep in mind this is a country that doesn't celebrate Halloween...)

We even got to see the Incredible Hulk

To participate in the event you have your own conker threaded onto a string. You then take turns striking the opponents conker with your conker. The winner smashes the other's conker (of course the MC kept talking about nuts and smashing nuts, etc...). Since the actual conker event can be a little boring to watch (oops, I shouldn't have said that) the girls found some other activities to fill their time. They had archery, bouncy castles, and a guide dog demonstration.

Brittney is actually pretty good at archery

Sophie following in her sister's footsteps

The guide dog demonstration was all of our favorites. The trainer talked to us about how they train the dogs, how they pick the dogs, and how they introduce them to their owners. Then he allowed the girls to take turns going through an obstacle course with the guide dogs while the girls were blind folded. He then talked to the girls about what it is like to be blind and how important the dogs are... it was really cool.

All in all it was a wonderful day! Oh, the winner of the conker championship was a mechanic dressed as something...