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.

Odds Farm, Wooburn Green, High Wycombe

4/6/2010

So me and Joe have been wanting to go to Odds farm for roughly three years, ever since he started uni and we realised High Wycombe didn't have much else to offer after you've seen the chair museum. Why did we want to go so much? Sheep racing. That's why. Teddy bear "jockeys" are tied on to various sheep and then the sheep are chased around a race course, while being forced to hurl themselves over jumps for the sick amusement of the paying visitors. The pictures on the website looked amazing. We were ridiculous excited.

House next to Odds Farm, best decorated house ever

This house was the first thing we saw when we arrived, I'm torn between loving and hating the paint job. Big tick for originality, but big cross for idiocy so it balances itself out to indifference I think. Thats not true, I do quite admire it.

Incredibly cute foal

Anyway after paying £9(!) to get in, we purchased animal feed and started wondering around the paddock. There were lots of baby animals too see, but most of the paddocks had double fencing around them, which was annoying because it means you couldn't get close enough to stroke most of the animals. I realise this is for safety reasons, so the animals are less likely to escape but also so that people don't get injured by the animals. But since its quite expensive to get in, its not really value for money. I'm probably just moaning, if id been the recommend age group (5-10) which the farm tries to attract, I wouldn't have been so bitter because they have a several really good play grounds and mini motorized tractors to go on. 

I was too big to go on these. I was jealous. I still am.

Lazy Pigs!

chicken with hat

Easiest maze in the world

After we had wondered around for a while, we stumbled upon the worlds easiest maze (yes I know its designed for children). We had to find the sheep inside, they weren't real sheep of course, just cardboard ones named things like 'Flossy' and 'Snowy'.

Mini Golf

Next we played mini gold, I don't know who won, we were all pretty bad, but i did finish first - so I count that as a victory for me.

Escapee goat

Baby Goats

Donkeys

Baby rabbits

sheep

Goats doing a crazy head dance to get food

Hiding piglet

left behind

In the end we didn't see the sheep racing, we had to leave at 2pm and it wasn't on till 3.30. We were pretty gutted, I hope we go back sometime. It was a fun day out, it's probably more fun for children than grown ups, but that's not surprising really.