"Heroine's Journey": Self-Defence & Swordcraft Experience

A three-hour experience, bare hands to blade — for readers who've wondered what it feels like to stop being the one who needs saving.
About this Event

Your Favourite Heroines Weren't Born Fearless. They Trained.

A three-hour experience bare hands to blade - for readers who've always wondered what it would feel like to stop being the one who needs saving.

You know the moment. The heroine who starts the book flinching becomes the one who doesn't. Long before she ever picks up a sword, she learns to move, to hold her ground, to not be overpowered with her bare hands. Then - and only then - she picks up her blade.

"Heroine's Journey" is that arc, in one afternoon.

This isn't stage combat and it isn't cosplay. It's genuine historical martial arts — real unarmed movement and grappling, real longsword technique, and real paired-dagger work — taught by an instructor with 25+ years across European and Asian traditions.

You'll start on the ground floor: how to move, how to hold a clinch, how to off-balance someone with nothing but your own bodyweight. From there you'll pick up the longsword - guards, footwork, a real cut, a real parry - before finishing with double daggers, the fast, close-range weapon of choice for a rival-court assassin or a heroine who's run out of room to swing a blade. It all builds to an expanded Final Trial: your own choreographed sequence pulling from all three, with the option of a partnered duel, filmed and photographed for you to keep.

What's included:

• 3 hours of hands-on instruction, zero experience required
• Foundation unarmed skills: movement, clinch work, and beginner-safe grappling
• Two weapons taught: longsword plus a double-dagger second weapon
• Training weapons throughout (no sharps, fully safe for beginners)
• An expanded "Final Trial" — solo sequence and optional partnered duel, filmed/photographed for you to keep
• A reality-check debrief on what your favourite books get right (and dramatically wrong) about combat
• Small groups (max 16) so you get real coaching, not a crowd

Who it's for:

Readers of romantasy - Sarah J. Maas, Rebecca Yarros, and beyond - who want to feel a little of what their favourite characters feel. No fitness level required. No experience necessary. Just curiosity and a willingness to try.

Where & who:

Run by Canterbury Medieval Combat at St Dunstan's Church Hall, Canterbury - taught by a Chief Instructor with decades of experience in historical European and Asian martial arts, and a working knowledge of exactly how Hollywood (and BookTok) gets it wrong.

Please note: The location is fixed but there might be a change of date