The Royal Norfolk Show - Norwich

1/7/2010

This year I managed to blag a free ticket to the Royal Norfolk Show (I say blagged, its not like I'm cool enough to have super blagging skillz but Lucy had a free one because her sister was showing goats) so I got  to go to the show for the first time and also managed to save my self £25! Go me!

The Royal Norfolk Show runs over two days and is probably Norfolk's biggest agricultural show - I would assume given how many animals were present anyway. Like most county shows that I've ever been too, there were lots of competitions for judging the best sheep, pigs, goats, chickens as well as show jumping and horse and carriage driving etc.

 There were also hundreds of stands selling everything from local produce, clothing and lemonade to alternative hearses and tractors. There were also stands that from the local schools that put on a number of displays about worthy subjects like water production, recycling and bees. Then there were the more exciting ones that had activities for 'children' such as finger and potato painting... and yes I did some potato printing - obviously.

Me, Lucy and Josh arrived at the show ground at the ungodly hour of 9am, and set off in search of Lucy's youngest sister Chloe who was involved in showing goats. Her class was at 11.30 (although we didn't know that then) but we needed to find where the goat tent actually was, and more importantly find some breakfast.

Two of the goats Chloe shows

Some of the prizes they won on the 1st day

We found some awesome nourishment in the form of ostrich and kangeroo burgers, I had kangeroo and Josh had the Ostrich. His was better, kangeroo was rather like beef - so a bit dull. We then had an ice cream each and went to watch the goats.

Josh and I with our breakfast

Menu

Chloe showing her goat

Sadly Chloe didn't win, although she had had some really good results the day before, we then all trooped over to the schools tent where Chloe had to pick up 2nd prize in the year 10 &11 art competition. When we saw the picture that had won, we all thought she had been robbed and should have come first, but then of course we were all biased. Chloe and I then went for a wander around the tent collecting stickers and making potato prints. We are clearly the coolest people ever.

Chloe and her picture

The picture that won

Amazing poem

My favourite picture

In the afternoon, Josh and Lucy had to go back to work to grow some bacteria or something else suitably complicated, and Lucy's mum offered me a lift home so I decided to stay for the afternoon. When they left, I went and brought a ticket to watch the show jumping in the main arena, for £7 I got to watch precisely 5 rounds before the competition ended. What a good buy that was. I then perused the show ground in search of things to do. I looked around all of the stalls and went to the Norfolk Bee keepers tent to learn some more facts about bees, and also watched the oddity that was the sheep show.

The amazing sheep show

Norfolk bee keeps stand

Anglia funeral service

Tractor stand

Prize winning pig

Hot cows

After I had filled my head with useful sheep related knowledge I headed back to the main goat tent. Chloe, Lucy's mum and I were roped into taking the goats into one of the arena's so that children could come up and stroke them and lead them around the paddock. The goats were pretty naughty, either jamming their feet into the ground and refusing too move or else bombing around the paddock dragging some poor child behind them. Goats are incredible.

Pets Corner, Oulton Broad, Suffolk

11/6/2010

What is there to do in Beccles? Turns out not much. Last friday me and Lucy went to visit our friend Beth who has just moved house. She is the first one out of our group of friends to do the marriage/house thing so we always get excited to go to her house as it is far nicer than our crappy, rundown student houses. After a detour where we ended up in tesco's rather than at her house (they share postcodes apparently) we arrived and Beth showed us around Beccles. After lunch - where Beth pretty much threw lasagne in Lucy's eyes - we went for a walk by the river. It was grey and miserably overcast, but we saw some cool boats and tried to avoid being chased by geese. We also played in the kids playground - dont judge us! You know you would do it too.

In the park

By the river

After all that excitement, we went back to Beth's, well we tried. It was the first time she has used her new door key and it wouldn't work. We all tried - god knows we tried, then we resorted to recruiting her neighbours (great first impression she made I'm sure!). After about an hour of turning the key, the neighbour decided we weren't just useless girls but that we were actually right after all, so he tried to try and open the window from the outside - needless to say, this failed too. We were stuck on the door step till Josh came home - three hours later.

Man trying to brake into Beths house

Rather than wait,we went on an expedition, and ended up at pets corner in Oulton Broad. Pets corner is literally in a corner - its in the corner of a car park - but it was awesome! Only £3 to get in and there were loads of animals: chinchillas, lemars, hens, snakes, goats, a pony, meerkats, rabbits etc and we brought some pet food for 25p. It was better than a lot of the actual zoo's I've been too.

Pets corner, in the corner of the car park

Snowy

We saw chickens get cooked

Lucy loved the lemars and chinchillas, and Beth got too excited when she realised that all the animals were for sale. Then we went to the goat pen, and everything we had seen up until that point was eclipsed by the sheer cuteness of three very tiny baby goats. They looked like they had just been born but the boys in charge (literally boys they looked about 8, with very very strong suffolk accents) told us they were about a year old. I'm not sure if I believe them on not.

BABY GOATS!!

Guinea Pigs

The goats were nice, when you feed them they lick the food off your hands rather than bite it off, which made me laugh, but good god did they smell. It wasn't even a nice animal smell it was rank. I imagine its how pure evil would smell. It was so bad it actually put me off trying to kidnap one of the baby goats.

Then we saw a pony called Princess. I loved princess, someone had plaited her mane and she looked really sad and ashamed, I don't think it was consentual plaiting. We saw some meerkats too, but they were pretty dull.

I love princess

We then went back to Beths and had a BBQ, we made brownies and Beth coloured in a picture she had brought for £1 in 'Gary's Bargains'. Inside Beth is five. I love Beth.

Josh being manly by the BBQ, Beths picture is at the front