East of England Show

For Father's Day we made our way the the East of England show out at the showgrounds. We had talked about going in year's past but hadn't due to icky weather, but this year was very nice. It was a bit chilly at times but still a great day out. The East of England show is really like a big fair with dog shows, horse shows, farm animals, antique tractors, vendors, big sandwiches, ice cream, rides and more....and we did it all. Our first stop was the dog show...we all loved watching the dogs jump fences, run through tunnels and balance on see saws...it was especially funny to see all the different ways the trainers get the dogs to do things.

Different from our local American county fairs, actual farmers are the ones showing the animals and they wear white lab coat looking things. This was quite a large bull and later on we watched how they would show a class of 5 mixed cows/calves/bull/heifers combinations. Very interesting to us farm kids to see things done in such different ways.

Showing sheep....Addison and Harrison kept yelling out "BAAAA" and "I wanna touch them mummy!"

They also had a blacksmith/ferrier competition to make and fit a set of horseshoes. It was very interesting to see them all in such "American" looking duds since this is what most people looked like in the Block and Bridle club at ISU....we felt like we were at home.

Lots of food vendors were there and one of my favorites was the Jordan's booth. Harrison and I crave the Jordan's Strawberry Clusters Oatmeal that they make and we snarl it up with a bit heaping scoop of yoghurt on top. Here they were giving way taster samples of different granolas and such. Also if you bought 10 GBP worth of cereal you could get a nifty Jordan's burlap bag. I am kicking myself for not snatching up one of those.

I love fair food but this was one of the most amazing sandwiches I've ever had at any fair...even beats a big ol' tenderloin at the Iowa State Fair. It was a pork and apple burger with English back bacon and huge chucks of English cheddar melting on top....yum meeeee!!!

It wouldn't be summer in England without strawberries and cream so we got a cup full to share amongst us all.

Next we were off to watch the wagon team pulling competition. Essentially there were about 6-7 teams of horses pulling open wagons with 3 people riding on them. Then one older looking chap standing out in the middle of the ring just watching them all walk the horses around. He didn't write anything down or do much other than watch. Then after about 25 minutes they announced the winners. We learned from someone that they get judged on how well the team of horses move together, if the reigns are all even, and some other things. Very confusing but pretty interesting. The people who won have actually been winning every competition for the past few months as we were told.

Next we had to grab and ice cream of course. Probably some of the worst ice cream we've had so far but the kids didn't seem to mind. Then off to the horse jumping competitions which are Addison's favorite.

In this competition it looked like boys and girls around 14-16 years old who have to jump fences with their horses and then at a point they hop off of their horse and then onto a mountain bike and weave in and out of the red cones and throw some water and back to the finish. It was crazy!!! One kid got caught with a bad bike that someone had gotten the gears all screwed up...don't know how they reconcile that one.

We walked through all the commercial vendors and I loved this mobile post office in the back of a van.

Kevin really like the old steam engines. There was also a really cool old calliope that played fun little songs through it's whistles and organs and other instruments and we all danced along.

There was also a parade of antique tractors. We saw tractors from all over including ones from Charles City, Iowa and an old CAT tractor (in this picture).

Of course no fair would be complete without going on at least one ride. Addison kept begging to ride on the big carrousel and we promised she could and when it came time to go, she actually said the carrousel she wanted to ride was the little swing one which was perfect for her and Harry to go onto together.

Before we headed home we did a walk through of the all the animals so we looked at the pigs, the sheep and cow barns.

It was a great day certainly a wonderful Father's Day!!!! It was really nice because it was great to be where we were and with all the animals, tractors and such there was a real reminiscence of home.