https://vo.rs/tags/conkers/Latest from the Conkers desk at vo.rs.Hugo -- gohugo.ioenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Sun, 08 Oct 2017 09:48:00 +0000https://vo.rs/encore/the-conker-world-championship-in-a-northamptonshire-field/<p>Somewhere between four and five thousand people show up in rural Northamptonshire on the second Sunday of every October to watch roughly four hundred competitors take turns smashing horse chestnuts against each other on a length of string. That sentence should not describe a functioning world championship with decades of continuity, a governing body, and a rulebook precise enough to specify the minimum gap between knuckle and nut in inches. And yet here we are. The World Conker Championships is one of the most purely, unapologetically British sporting events I have ever researched, and its origin story is the most British part of all: it exists because some men couldn&rsquo;t go fishing.</p>Sun, 08 Oct 2017 09:48:00 +0000