Mike Catt, England Rugby Player and Coach will be appearing at the Show as Clydesdale Bank’s ‘Sports Personality’.
Every year the Show is treated to a visit from a well know sports person and 2013 is no exception. Mike Catt will be coaching a local football team, meeting fans and trying his hand at the Rugby Simulator brought in to help Show visitors and Rugby enthusiasts practice their kicking aim.

Lincolnshire Show organisers are delighted to announce Stagecoach East Midlands will be once again running a commercial bus service between the Lincoln City Bus Station and the Lincolnshire Showground for the on Wednesday 19^th and Thursday 20^th June for the 129^th Lincolnshire Show.

The modern, low floor DDA accessible, low emission buses will run approximately every 15 minutes in both directions starting at 8:30am until 6:30pm.

Return fares £4 Adults, £2 Children, £10 Family ticket, which includes 2 Adults and 3 Children. Tickets can be purchased in advance from the Bus Station.

The service will run to exactly the same route as the previous year.

The busses will travel via Wigford Way, Newland, Yarborough Road and Burton Road out of the city then along the B1398 to Tillbridge Lane A1500 where it will enter the showground. It will return via the reverse route. Passengers can board at any bus stop on along the route by clearly signaling to the driver.

Buses will enter and depart the Showground using Gate 3 and 4 on Tillbridge Lane.

Under the revised terms of the Lincolnshire Concessionary Fare Scheme senior citizen and disabled people’s bus passes are not valid on this service.

Drivers can enjoy free parking available on both days of the Lincolnshire Show, however some routes may be disrupted so you are advised to check your route before setting off.

For more information visit www.stagecoach.co.uk

END

The 129^th Lincolnshire Show takes place on Wednesday 19^th and Thursday 20^th June this year from 8am-6pm each day.

Dubbed as one of the county’s most infamous events, the organiser’s promise an exciting day out for all the family, and this year is shaping up to be no exception. The event is brimming with activities for all ages – and even dogs are welcome through the gates.

Select Lincolnshire will be championing the county’s finest produce from cheese and ale to cakes and crisps. Expect old favourites and new editions to this year’s Food Court with Pipers Crisps, Cote Hill Blue, Redhill Farm Free Range Pork and the newly launched Scrubby’s Vegetable Crisps.

Show sponsors Duckworth will be offering a Land Rover Experience for thrill seeking car enthusiasts wanting to tackle a purpose -built off road course. The track will run behind the Duckworth Land Rover stand and contrast Lincolnshire’s flat landscape with steep inclines and rough terrain.

A land train will travel throughout the 200 acres of Showground on both days. This free bus will offer visitors a fun and relaxing way for the whole family to see the Show – without leaving your seat.

Aviation fanatics will be treated to a number of air displays including a demonstration from the Showground’s neighbours The Red Arrows and a spectacular fly past from the Battle of Britain Memorial Dakota aircraft.

Agriculture and farming are still very much at the heart of the Lincolnshire Show and will be evident throughout the event. Once again visitors will be able to watch the popular machinery parade, sponsored by Spalding’s and the vintage tractor display. There will be numerous livestock and equine competitions on both days culminating at the ‘Grand Parade’ ceremony.

The Discovery Zone, sponsored by Woldmarsh will be back with a new theme – ‘From Cow to Cornett’. Visitors will learn about the journey from the farm to the ice cream parlour via Lincolnshire’s Dennett’s Ice Cream. With taste testing, demonstrations and talks visitors will leave the Show knowing everything about their favourite summertime treat.

The Jerry Green Dog Crèche returns with their team of expert dog handlers offering fresh water and food, space to roam and shaded areas for any of our visiting four-legged friends.

Finally don’t forget the 600 shopping stands in the RSA Mews and beyond including Showground favourites Joules, Aga Rangemaster and new to the Show Rampant Sporting.

What better way to spend the day than browsing 200 acres of shops, watching entertaining events, learning about Lincolnshire’s farming roots, listening to music, eating delicious food and sipping a glass of Pimm’s on the lawn?

Wednesday 19^th and Thursday 20^th June 2013

This year’s annual county show will bring to life all 200 acres of the Lincolnshire Showground with activities for the whole family. Entertainment, animals, shopping, music, history and plenty of food will keep everyone satisfied for the entire day.

Sponsors include Clydesdale Bank, Duckworth Isuzu and new supporters Bishop Burton College.

Reflecting the agricultural roots of the Show are the Horse, Pony and Livestock competitions, the vintage and modern Machinery Parade and Agricultural lines filled with Lincolnshire’s farming businesses.

The Horticultural area sponsored by The Willows Garden Centre and Restaurant will bloom with floral displays and plants on sale for garden enthusiasts. While the WI return to provide afternoon tea to keep flower show competitors and visitors alike well fed with scones, cake and tea.

Trading in New Markets, a new initiative started in 2012 is back to encourage local companies to export their product further afield. A networking marquee will be sited in the busy Tenth Avenue to showcase Lincolnshire’s thriving industries.

The Clydesdale Main Ring will see three new events. Katy Cropper, the only female winner of BBC TV show ‘One Man and His Dog’ will give a working sheep dog display. The Fast and Furious Mounted Games Association of Great Britain will showcase their speed, agility and skill with a thrilling relay while the new British Scurry & Trials Driving team of single, pairs, tandem team ponies, of all shapes and sizes race against the clock, around a demanding course of both scurry gates and driving trials type obstacles.

The Discovery Zone, sponsored by Woldmarsh has a ‘From Cow to Cornet’ theme, illustrating the journey from the farm to the ice cream parlour – courtesy of Lincolnshire experts Dennett’s Ice Cream. More than 1000 students involved in the Schools’ Challenge will be taste testing and learning the art of ice cream making, including a launch of a brand new flavour – Lincolnshire Plum Loaf.

One of the most popular areas, the Food Court will be filled with Lincolnshire and international produce. The sights and smells of the county’s yields will give visitors endless options at lunchtime.

The RSA Mews will present exclusive boutique style shopping, while the 600 trade stands spanning the Showground will offer everything from clothes to cars.

Members of the Lincolnshire Agricultural Society will benefit from indoor dining, ringside seating and an exclusive concert on the Wednesday evening. Membership starts at £38 for Young People and £58 for Adults.

Visit the Lincolnshire Show website www.lincolnshireshow.co.uk for more information and to book your discounted advanced tickets. Alternatively, call the ticket line on 08452 305171 or visit one of ticket outlets listed on the website.

PR Lincolnshire Show pulls out all the stops

Uncle Henry’s also contributed to the Lincolnshire show by having a live sausage making demonstration for the schools. This was to educate children on how sausages are made and how our sausages differentiate from those brought from a supermarket. These were presented by our Butchery manager Louise who gave thrilling demonstration.

Over the course of the two days there were over 600 children who watch the presentation. The presentations would last around 20 minutes and Louise would often get volunteers up to help her make the sausages. At the final stage of the sausage making process Louise would get the children to select a teacher to pick on and they would have to try and link the sausages together. Great effort from all of the teachers, unfortunately despite their best efforts none would be eligible to be sold in a shop. It’s harder than it looks to make a sausage!

The journey started at Lincolnshire Events Centre at 6.30am, after negotiating rush hour traffic on the M62, they arrived at the Rain Bar in Manchester City Centre to start 6 hours of intense training on the WordPress content management system for the Society and Event Centre websites.   

A very busy agenda was set, including words like plugins, widgets and dashboards, intriguing stuff indeed. With a variety of businesses around the table including an online chess board seller and a wine merchant, the day was set to be full of excitement and interest.

Learning how to put in place the structure of a website and populate the pages was the morning’s task, with dummy websites based on an imaginary adventure company, Amelia and Sarah soon got to grips with adding images and posting blogs.

After a well deserved lunch, the next task was looking at the design of the website and how you can enhance your search engine optimisation. Choosing themes that made the design much more user friendly was paramount. The course was excellent and gave both Amelia and Sarah a brilliant boost of knowledge and lots of exciting ideas of how to develop further the websites. 

Look out for lots of new features and functions appearing on the Society and Events Centre websites soon.   

Thanks to Jamie at Pootlepress for such an interesting day that went far too quickly.

• A46 from the south – there are significant roadworks at Damons regarding the Teal Park works and dualling of the stretch – this causes approx ½ hour delay each day at rush hour with normal traffic levels.
• On Wednesday there was a broken down HGV on the stretch of carriage way near to Skellingthorpe roundabout (on the single carriage way part) at rush hour.
• The same day there was a further broken down vehicle in the similar stretch, at a similar time.
• Early on Wednesday morning an elderly person collapsed/tripped at Wragby. Cars stopped to assist, and ambulance was called.
• A number of vehicles carried out U-turns on the A15 and were caught by the police motorcyclists – there was a significant number of these, and some had travelled some distance before the motorcyclist found them.  If traffic had been allowed to use both lanes, these vehicles would have likely been involved in head on collisions.  Although only one lane of the road was used, the slip road allowed for two lanes to be used into the car parks.
• Many vehicles followed the signs which said ‘Show only’ and arrived at the Showground saying that they didn’t want to go to the Show. These vehicles included 53 seater coaches, and articulated vehicles. For each one the staff has to deal with, it causes a knock on down the road for those who are coming in to the Show who can’t / won’t drive past the vehicle which has stopped. 

However we are also keen to improve on any areas that we can and suggestions that have been made are: 

• Members’ priority forward parking – vehicles were crossing lanes in and out of car parks, stewards directions need to be clear and adhered to.
• Traders arriving at the Show should be greeted further into the Showground.
• Pick up and drop offs were taking place at gate 1 which was causing disruption as the vehicles that had dropped off then wanted to get back out of the Show area. The Show’s official pick up and drop off point is gate 3 – this needs to be publicised and signposted further.
• This was also taking place at gate 9 – again an area not laid out for the purpose, so traffic was being delayed whilst the vehicle stopped as near to the gate as they could and then moved back out and again a problem we can address through promotion and signage of the correct gate to use.

These observations are only the start of our ongoing investigation into the traffic management system at the Show along with all aspects of the event that we strive to improve each year.  If you have any comments you would like to share with us then please email admin@lincs-events.co.uk

For pictures to download :  click here

There was a special visit to the Sports zone at this year’s Lincolnshire Show when ex England and Surrey wicket-keeper Alec Stewart visited the ECB cricket factory to pass on his knowledge and experience in the game.  Stewart visited the show as part of his role as sports ambassador for Clydesdale Bank, the main sponsors of the Lincolnshire Show.

Alec Stewart gave a short master class to four young cricketers, where he showed them the correct technique to playing on the front foot when batting and how to throw accurately at the stumps. He also managed a brief moment to show that he could still play that exquistic front foot drive that made him such a success as a wicket keeper batsman for so many years. After the session Alec stayed to sign merchandise and to pose for pictures.

Alec’s visit was an important one for the sponsors of Clydesdale Bank; he spoke to the media on his role for the show’s main sponsor, saying:

“My role as sports ambassador is to encourage people to get involved into sport and to stress the importance of sport in everyday life”.

With this summer’s calendar packed full of major sporting competitions it was fitting that an ex professional sportsman visited the show.

Alec also explained how he got into cricket and the amount of time he spent playing the sport as a youngster:  “Whenever I had a spare moment I would have a bat in my hand or I would be throwing a ball around”.

ENDS

The hottest day of summer was followed by a day of stormy showers, but that didn’t stop the visitors coming to this year’s Lincolnshire Show, the county’s big day out.

Early estimates put total visitor figures at almost 60,000, an “outstanding result” in the face of the changing weather conditions, according to organisers.  A lively social media feed helped to boost visitor interest, with the Show recording a mammoth 4 million Twitter hits.

Organisers also reported trade stand bookings up 5% on 2011, as well as an increased number of livestock and equine competition entries, with many entrants travelling from across the UK to take part.

For Showground Director Jayne Southall, it was her first year leading the team.  She said:  “We’ve had a fantastic Show and it’s been wonderful to see everything come together. The biggest highlight for me was seeing the smiles on the faces of everyone visiting.”

She added:  “We had a big boost to visitor numbers with the wonderful sunshine on day one, and although numbers were down on Thursday, the showers seemed to do little to dampen enthusiasm and we had a steady flow of visitors arriving throughout the morning.

“The Show has proved itself once again as a major visitor attraction which helps to bring Lincolnshire’s wider visitor and tourism story to a national audience.”

Each year the Show is a big earner for the county of Lincolnshire and it is estimated that every £1 spent at the Show generates £20 in the local economy and the Show provides a major boost for local hotels and B&Bs, creating demand for 18,400 overnight stays locally.

A new initiative for this year’s Show was the Trading in New Markets marquee.  Designed to celebrate the successes of those Lincolnshire companies already trading nationally and internationally, its aim is to encourage other Lincolnshire businesses to open up new export markets and take their products to a wider audience.  Amongst those visiting was a group of 30 Australian farmers on a UK fact-finding mission.  Their group leader, former State Wool Manager Frank Jones, said:  “The Lincolnshire show was a real highlight of our trip, with a huge crowd and brilliant sunshine.”

This year’s Sports Zone had top billing in the run up to the 2012 London Games, encouraging visitors to try their hand at a huge range of Olympic and Paralympic sports and a visit from cricketing legend Alec Stewart was a crowd-pleaser. Stewart visited the Show as part of his role as sports ambassador for Clydesdale Bank, one of the main sponsors of the Lincolnshire Show, and during his visit he gave a master class to some of the county’s young cricketers.

More than a thousand young people took part in the Schools Challenge, demonstrating their understanding of food, farming and agriculture.  Winners were Wragby Primary School, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar in Alford, and St Lawrence School in Horncastle.

The Hugh Bourn special trophy for the best agricultural machinery stand went to Louth Tractors.  Presenting the award Show President Lord Taylor of Holbeach, said:  “The display represented all that is good in Lincolnshire farming, energy, enthusiasm and technology.”

He added:  “I attend many Shows throughout the country, and I know that the general standard at Lincolnshire is extremely high.  Touring the Food Court and seeing the quality of produce, shows how lucky we are to live in Lincolnshire.”

In the equine rings, a busy programme saw top level competition with enthusiasts travelling from as far as Taunton in Somerset and St. Albans in Hertfordshire to enter the wide variety of pony and horse classes.  Both days gave Chief Equine Steward Peter Crafts a busy schedule.  He said: “I am extremely pleased and all the classes had a fantastic turnout, to a very high standard .”

Philip Hilton, horse ring controller commented on the highlights saying: “Last year’s Horse of the Year Show winner Danielle Heath has had a fantastic show, winning both Champion Hack and The Hunter challenge class, and a particular highlight for me was Marie Girdham winning the ex Racehorse challenge. She is a local girl who took time off from nursing at Lincoln County Hospital to compete at the Show.  She won her class and qualified for The Royal Windsor Show.”

In the livestock lines, John Davies, the judge for the Texel sheep, was very impressed with the standard of sheep at the Show, saying: “All the sheep showed excellent attributes.”  Judges were also impressed in the cattle section. The Bull class on Thursday had one of the largest number of entries and judge of the Limousin group Mr Tippetts said: “The class this year was really good, the best I have seen for a long time.”

As well as the county’s finest animals on show, there was an exciting mix of rural and family attractions, including the best of Lincolnshire produce at the massive Select Lincolnshire and Tastes of Lincolnshire Food Court which saw a big turnout, for the tastings and demonstrations.  Exhibitor Simon Jones of Lincolnshire Poacher Cheese won the best Food Court stand.  He said: ‘’We are a family run business since 1917 and we sell only Lincolnshire produce. We’re Lincolnshire through and through, and still in shock to win overall.’’

For many businesses around the county the Lincolnshire Show gives them the chance to showcase their products and services. Printing business Systematic of Caistor attend the show every year and Paul Bingham from the company said: “The wet and windy weather meant that business was slow in the morning on the second day but overall this year’s Show has been absolutely phenomenal for us, with some firm enquiries from large companies.”

ENDS

www.lincolnshireshow.co.uk

 @lincsshow

Media enquiries:

Karen Malpass at Lincolnshire Events Centre and Lincolnshire Agricultural Society

kmalpass@lincs-events.co.uk   – 01522 585504

Maggie Taylor at Prima PR

maggie@primapr.co.uk – 01400 251557 / 0797 3767 602

Editor’s Note:

Lincolnshire Events Centre is a major national conferencing venue, home of the Lincolnshire Show and the groundbreaking EPIC project.  Just outside the historic city of Lincoln, the Centre hosts events for 10 to 10,000 visitors on its 200 acre showground site and 3000 square metres of indoor exhibition and venue space.

Outdoor events include the flagship Lincolnshire Show, antiques fairs and horse trials, attracting over 200,000 visitors each year. Under cover, there are exhibition halls and conferencing facilities, including the recently completed EPIC centre, the second largest purpose-designed showcase for environmental technologies in the UK, it enables event organisers to reduce, monitor and offset their carbon footprint.