I USED to be a regular visitor to the Royal Show at Stoneleigh, but I’ve not been recently. However, with the aid of a cheap ticket, I thought I’d go again.
Weatherwise, I could not have chosen a worse year; even so I wondered how it would measure up to the good old days.
I was to be disappointed. Although all started well - it had not yet started raining - I made the mistake of entering the show next to the wilderness of trade and craft stands, an area that I remember as being full of agricultural machinery.
I soon retreated to the livestock area where there were excellent entries of both cattle and sheep in large purpose-built buildings, essential this year to try keep the weather at bay.
In this area there used to be a wide range of trade stands, but this year they were either blank spaces or car parks for the multitude of transit vans which always seem essential at these shows.
As it turned out the highlight this year was the presentation in the main ring of a Gold Medal to Mr Helmut Claas of the Claas Machinery Company.
Well known as a manufacturer of combine harvesters and more recently of forage harvesters, it is now a manufacturer of what I would refer to as Renault tractors.
This ceremony was particularly touching to me as I had been introduced to Mr Claas on a recent farm tour to the company’s main manufacturing plant in Harsewinkel, Germany.
Mr Claas made a special visit to our group when we visited their demonstration farm in the afternoon. It was probably as close as I will ever get to actually driving one of Class’ new Lexion 580 combines.
Not everyone was unhappy with the mud at the Royal
This all compares with the day at the Royal Show many years ago when there was a similar presentation to my cousin, then the marketing manager at Dronningburg, which manufactured combine harvesters in Denmark but were sold by Massey Ferguson in this country.
On that beautiful summer day I was to enjoy wonderful hospitality courtesy of Massey Ferguson. How different it was this year: as soon as Mr Claas’ magnificent combine had left the ring, the heavens opened for yet another drenching.
As soon as it stopped raining this was the signal for me to depart to retrieve my car from a getting-muddier-by-the-minute car park.
Perhaps this will be my last visit to the Royal Show: I’m not sure agricultural shows really mix well with what essentially has become a country fair.
No longer was there the banter with fellow farmers from different parts of the country. They’ve been replaced by a new breed of visitor, like the person sitting in front of me in the grandstand who, when two hunting packs were paraded around the main ring, referred to them as “dogs”.
