The Great Yorkshire Show

I moved down to Yorkshire Monday evening, July 9th to stay with Huw Dyer for a few weeks.  He is the head steward at the Great Yorkshire Show's Farrier competition.  I find it crazy, but the show, one of the largest agricultural shows in the country, runs from Tuesday to Thursday.  Despite this it draws hundreds of thousands of people and provides a huge financial boost for Harrogate and the surrounding area.  The catch there was that the show was cancelled on Wednesday and Thursday due to many little problems- such as the water failing on half of the grounds- but mainly to mud.  Non stop rain for the last month or more, culminating with torrential downpours on Tuesday rendered the grass car parking so bad that cars were getting damaged being towed IN.  I heard a rumor about a horse van that got ripped in half, but haven't had it confirmed or not.

Public or not, the shoeing carried on.  There is a gorgeous new Forge, just opened on Monday after twenty years in the works, and the show officials were happy to have us keep going.  It was up on high ground, so no worries about flooding or bad parking.

The Forge as seen from the viewing room before it has ever been used.  You can just see the corner of the ninth and tenth fires at the bottom left.  There are also standing stalls for ten horses.

The Forge as seen from the opposite end.  Some of the drafts are in place for the shoeing on Thursday.

I did a few classes, which was great fun and quite a learning experience.  Dave Wilson Jr. helped me out in the open shoeing class.  I made some horrible "double dobbers" from 18" of 1-1/4" x 1/2", which is very big stock for me.  I did manage my goal of getting them done in the time limit, with much thanks to Dave, who is fantastically experienced, patient and organized.  On Wednesday I did the hunter shoeing with the assistance of John Atkinson, the English National Champion.  There again, many thanks to him for getting me through something I was not familiar with.  Because the hunters are shod with no extra length- the heels are supposed to blend together- and in concave I had no idea how to measure for this.  All things considered, it came out okay, if not as well as I would like.  The caulk and feather specimen (which I had been practicing) was adequate.  It wasn't the best by any means, but at least it looked like a horse shoe, and now I know how to make one, which I couldn't do two weeks ago!

The rest of my time was helping the stewards out and keeping the orange juice and hot water full.  For this Huw got me a stewards badge and meal vouchers so I could get food anywhere and have access to the Judges and Stewards Pavillion.  Wow, do those people get treated to nice food!

Gotta keep the feathers out of the way!

Draft shoeing madness.  I still can't get over how well behaved all of the horses were!

All of the shoes on the table were from the Open Shoe Making class.  There were about 40 competitors, and I am very glad that I wasn't the judge.