We can rely on them in 2019
ANYONE who claims to know what’s going to happen in 2019 is either a fool or a mountebank. We enter the New Year with greater uncertainty on both sides of the Atlantic than at any time since the Second World War. That’s why Agromenes has resolved this year simply to look forward to the events upon which we can rely: those countryside activities that we nurture and celebrate in a seasonal round of which we never tire.
In these dark days of winter, I think first of the spring and early summer, when we will be taken up with the county shows. I particularly care for those that are still overwhelmingly agricultural, determinedly local and call upon large numbers of volunteers. Suffolk (May 29–30), the Royal Cornwall (June 6–8), Lincolnshire (June 19–20) and the Royal Welsh (July 22–25) are my particular favourites and no year passes without my going to at least one of them.
It’s our annual tribute to rural England, in which we celebrate modern technology, as well as historic skills from flint knapping to basket weaving and traditional craftsmen from thatchers to farriers.
There are also more specialised celebrations. This is the 69th year of the British National Ploughing Championships, which will be held at Nocton, near Lincoln, on October 12–13, showing the beauty that expert tilling creates, as memorably recognised by Gerald Manley Hopkins in The Windhover: ‘Sheer plod makes plough down sillion shine.’ It’s still true even where the tractor has replaced the horse.
If you can’t manage Lincoln, there’s also Co Carlow, where the Irish National Ploughing Championships will visit Ballintrane in September. It seems to have got over the row about the new venue—the local member of the Dáil managed to spill the beans prematurely and, not unnaturally, there was a significant public spat as the event attracts 300,000 visitors over three days and choosing the site is vitally important.
This is not a problem for another of my favourites: the Marmalade Festival, which has, for 14 years, been held in Dalemain in Cumbria. It’s been so successful that it’s raised £200,000 for hospices and the nearby town of Penrith is to go orange on March 16 to celebrate the event.
Later in the year, in the neighbouring county of Lancashire, comes another rural favourite: the National Sheepdog Trials. Popularised by TV, the skilful relationship between a man and his dog is a very special part of the rural scene. It’s hosted by Myerscough College and takes place on August 8–11 in the beautiful countryside of Lodge Farm.
The setting couldn’t be more fitting—myerscough is now one of the country’s leading providers of rural education and its food and farming innovation-and-technology centre is groundbreaking. Celebrating one of the oldest rural skills in a place that prepares young people for the complex world of modern food production is what’s needed as farming faces revolutionary change.
I can’t entirely sense the same utility in another annual event associated with sheep. Running up a 1-in-4 hill with a sack of wool on my back is not Agromenes’s idea of fun. However, it attracts thousands of spectators every year to Tetbury, Gloucestershire, in May, when relay teams compete, men carrying 60lb and women 35lb. Each team member completes the course, then drops the sack at the bottom of the hill, so the next can pick it up to run the 240 yards to the top.
From county shows to woolsack racing, 2019 will have plenty to occupy and amuse in the countryside. We’ll need it to take our minds off the wide world outside.
Running up a 1-in-4 hill with a sack of wool on my back is not my idea of fun