If Derbyshire County Show was described by a cricket player, it would be called Village.
It's a very rustic show with no permanent fixtures and an air of "who cares".
First things first: it's not a great idea to choose a show venue where access is only available via a single road, which itself has a bridge with traffic lights on it, in a suburban part of town. I spoke to showing people who had left home very early to get to the show in time for morning classes and been stuck on that road for nearly two hours. Two hours.
Tickets. If you are going to ask people to pay in advance for tickets then please look at them at least. IN our car we had a variety of tickets, including a Yellow car park pass for a vehicle accompanying a horse box and a normal public £13 ticket. Nobody so much as looked at any of them. First they tried to force us to go into a different car park, then when we got to the Yellow field the youth on the gate showed no interest at all and we had to find our own way to where the horse was.
Signing at the show was not good. As the delay on the road had made us late, I volunteered to find the ring our classes were in and to report back. There was nothing to give me anything to work on so I ended up going the long way around most of the rest of the show until I found the horse rings, just in time.
A quick phone call later and the horse and rider were on their way and our ring was only half an hour late. The judge, however, was not there, and a further half an hour later she appeared and proceeded to judge as though she didn't know which class was which. The first class we were in was judge on rider only but she spent three minutes with each horse examining its conformation and tack. Then when the judging was supposed to be split between overall picture, riding, conformation and way of going, she didn't look at the horses at all.
No harm done though, and our little eclectic group of likeminded folk got through our classes in quick time with the championship going to someone who was in a show ring for the very first time. Oh well.
It is a one day show so facilities marks are fairly standard. Toilets were a mixture of portaloos and trailer loos, and nobody seemed to be having to queue for very long at any of them. Food and drink looked fairly standard too, except that I found a lady with a shop in a van who had normally priced sandwiches as well as hot food like sausage rolls and pasties. A big sausage roll and a drink for £3.50 was very refreshing.
I never found the food hall or livestock areas because the horse rings are at the other end.
We would like to find out who the official photographer was. There was nobody photographing in the rings and only a few young people roaming around between the rings taking the odd pic over the fence.