Show season

Well it's the time of year for the agricultural shows starting. A couple of weeks ago I went with a friend and her children to the 'Royal Northern Countryside Live' show at Dunecht, near Aberdeen.

We were pretty impressed with the organisation - £5 entry fee for adults; free for under 16s. So £10 for a day out for 5 of us, including parking! A bit cheaper than the Royal Highland Show, which is on this week and costs £25 plus another £5 for parking. Mind you, it'll have a lot more stalls, etc - and the animals too - but we were happy with our day out at Dunecht. And with 5 of us to feed, etc. the cheap entry fee made the day very attractive.

There were 5 different show areas with shuttle buses running very regularly between them. At times the queues got very long, but the buses were so regular that the waits were actually not too bad, and a couple of times we just walked instead as it was only 1/2 mile or so between some of the areas.

There was lots on offer - from stalls selling produce and crafts, to demonstrations, sheep shearing and tractor rides.

There was an explanation for the large number of 'orphan' lambs. They're farming a new breed of sheep in the area. I can't remember what it's called but it's from Wales, and generally has 3 lambs.

The sheep can only look after 2 lambs itself, so there's a large number in the 'orphan lamb shed' being fed milk from these teats attached to the fence.

The one disappointment was that so much was watching other people do it, rather than trying things yourself, which for the older children got a little wearing. We felt that the advertising hadn't made this clear, and there seemed to be less to do at areas 4 and 5 compared to 1 and 2, which meant that your hopes were built up and then you were disappointed as you moved onto the next area.

 Tree climbing and forestry displays.

Chainsaw carving.

My pal and I managed to pick up quite a few useful teaching resources (do all teachers automatically pick up resources everywhere they go?) and even a few freebies for the kids too.

 Blacksmith at work.

 You could stick labels onto the Shetland pony to learn the names of the different body parts.

We finished up watching the gun dog trials.

All in all it was a really good day out, despite the small disappointment of being a lot to see but not much to do. Lots of ice creams and tractor rides made up for some of the disappointment for the kids.

We'd definitely go back to the show another year, which is always the sign of a good show.