Game Fair crowds swelled by sun

Record attendance expected at popular countryside event

This weekend’s Scottish Game Fair is on course to be a record breaker. Yesterday the nation’s biggest countryside show celebrated its busiest ever opening day. And soaring temperatures look set to lure crowds to the Scone Palace showground throughout the weekend. Around 35,000 people are expected to attend the three-day event, which is this year marking its 30th anniversary. Spectators were kept entertained with a variety of main stage events yesterday, including tug o’ war contests, birds of prey displays and music from Vale of Atholl and Strathallan School pipe bands.

Scotland’s young gamekeeper of the year was crowned at Scone Palace during the first day of the fair. Craig Hepburn, 22, received the top title from the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA). Selected from a final shortlist of three, the Highlander, who works at Candacraig Estate at Strathdon, was honoured by SGA vice-chairman Peter Fraser and NFUS vice-president Martin Kennedy. Receiving the inaugural SGA long service medals were four stalwarts still employed after more than 40 years of managing Scotland’s countryside. James Ferguson, Michael Ewan, Lea McNally and Colin Espie received specially engraved medals for unbroken service. Mr Fraser said: “It is great to see ambassadors, spanning the generations, being recognised. “In Scotland’s Year of Young People, we have Craig – in his early career – standing shoulder to shoulder with individuals whose passion and devotion to good land and river management are examples to all. “Scotland is internationally renowned for its landscape and it is the gamekeepers, farmers, ghillies and land managers, with their hours of toil and care, at the frontline.”

Picture: Steven Brown. Wanna lick? Five-year-old Ava Flett from Perth enjoys an ice cream at the Scottish Game Fair yesterday.