Royal Norfolk Show Plus 28th June to 1st July 2011

Our pitch at Mildenhall

We took our caravan to the Round Plantation Caravan Club site in Mildenhall on 28th June. We use the Mildenhall location as a convenient place to stay when we go to the Royal Norfolk Show. Although there are quite a number of pitches on the Mildenhall site they are located in 'glades' in the forest and from each pitch you can't see many other caravans. For much of the time the site is quiet and squirrels and other wild life play round the vans. However the site is close to both Mildenhall and Lakenheath airbases so there can be aircraft noise, some times this can continue into the night and early morning.

Jazzy the cat comes with us these days

 We were rather concerned that we were travelling quite a bit and leaving our cat Jazzy on her own so we decided to take her with us in future. She is great in the caravan but the actual travelling can be a bit of a problem, particularly for some reason coming home makes her wail a lot and get quite upset, hopefully she will eventually get used to it.

One of the food halls at the Norfolk Show

On the 29th June we drove up to the Royal Norfolk Show which is held outside Norwich. It's a huge even with something for virtually everyone. Our first port of call at the show was one of the huge food halls. Many of the stalls offer samples and you can buy everything from fruit juices to cakes and steaks. A good number of local beers are also on sale.

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Livestock is an important part of the show

Livestock of all shapes and sizes is an important part of this type of show. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chicken etc. etc. all have their own individual shows. In the main ring there are show jumping events and carriage driving contests.

Lots of variety included in the main ring entertainment

The main ring also has a wide variety of more 'general' entertainment. This year amongst other 'acts' were the White Helmet motorcycle display team and the Young Farmers put on a very entertaining show of their own. They had converted a number of ride on mowers adding huge engines to some of them. They also did an amusing take off of the red arrows whilst pushing wheel barrows.

Some of the machinery on sale is pretty big (in price as well)

 I love tractors and there is every type of farm machinery you can think of on sale. There are also hundreds of stands selling smaller items and I found the log splitters of particular interest even though I couldn't really justify buying one. Gardeners are also well catered for and there are competitions for garden design. Whether you want a Jacuzzi or a thatched gazebo you could find a variety on sale at the show.

Vintage machinery well represented

Another large area is devoted to vintage machinery. Old tractors and vintage stationary engines are in this part of the show. 

Basically there are so many different facets to this show that it's hard to do it justice in my blog but if you get the chance to visit this annual event I don't think that you will be disappointed.

We had an extra day or so at Mldenhall so the first thing we did was to have a look at the activity at the Lakenheath USAF air base. Normally they have a dedicated viewing area where you can park and watch the activity, this time this area was closed for some reason but no one seemed to object when we (and several others) parked on the side of the adjacent road and watched from there.

Lakenheath has some exciting action at times.

We eventually also found a small viewing area for the Mildenhall air base at a site called the Nook ( http://www.thenookcampsite.co.uk/site/thenookcampsite/price-list  ) where for a fee of around £1 you could get a good view of the Mildenhall runway, unfortunately we only found this place just before coming home so we couldn't take advantage of it.

On the Thursday we decided to visit Bury St Edmunds. This turned out to be a very interesting town with both modern and older sections. We didn't have time to visit the Cathedral or the Abbey but no doubt we will be back to see them. 

Bury St Edmunds

The older part of the Bury St Edmunds town contained lots of unusual shops. Julie found the Steam Trading Cooking shop of particular interest. In short a good mixture of old and new and a place that will have us returning before too long.