I think that it is fair to say that the weekend went really rather well despite the weather doing its very best to spoil things – I never knew that there were so many weather apps or so many forecasters around but they were all mostly wrong. We did start Saturday with thunder and lightening but it didn’t scare those at the venue off one little bit. Sunday offered more of the same including the threat of torrential downpours but they were steered away to the north east of London thankfully. Attendance was down due to these forecasts but we are grateful to all those who took the option to stay on the rugby club car park, I would say that the groundsman was very happy too.
Thank you to all the competitors that did make it, the atmosphere around the venue was amazing, smiley happy people, the release from Covid restrictions clearly had a part to play and the fact that were able to run the show in the ‘old fashioned’ way helped enormously.
Many thanks to all our judging teams, almost all of whom honoured agreements made for 2020, to the stewards and scoreboarders who help so much towards everyone’s success. Congratulations to all our winners, especially Lorna Hilton & Lenny, Dog CC and Jodi Lunn with Fia, B Girl CC, good luck at Crufts 2022. Well done to all club members, what a haul of rosettes, (and points), were collected over the 2 days, success for 2 first timers too.
This show is only a success because NWK have an amazing group of helpers and we receive offers of help from competitors too, I cannot name everyone as there are too many and I would hate to miss anyone but the camping team deserve a special mention, this is a difficult venue to police and without Linda Plows, Vanda Fitter, Gaynor Taylor and Thelma Alexander taking up the task of seeing everyone parked up correctly plus those that sat on the gate until 10 pm (sorry but I might miss one of you as I know you arranged it amongst yourselves) a sincere thank you to you all.
Aylesford Bulls Rugby club were really welcoming and there were many compliments regarding the catering – the picnic box lunch was a huge success and the cream teas were amazing. The working surface was in perfect order so a great all round effort from them was appreciated.
Only one really rather annoying incident that involved several members due to one person wanting delay their arrival until way after the venue gates are locked at 10pm – there is a reason for this, Travellers make repeated attempts to gain access to the venue and is why we had someone manning the gate from Friday to Sunday during daylight hours, it is not unreasonable to expect everyone coming to the show to comply with the request to arrive before the stated closure time. That the Club Manager had to be got out of bed at 11.45 to let the late comer in was beyond unreasonable and could have lost us the venue in the future. Such irresponsible action could put our future use of the venue in jeopardy and a 2 day event gone from the calendar.
We hope to be back to even more normality next year, 23 & 24 July 22, without the need to cap entries although smaller shows have some advantages!
Eileen RestellE