Our trip to the Royal Highland Show

This year was our first time at the Royal Highland Show, just outside Edinburgh and although it was quite a long drive and we faced challenging weather, it proved to be a very enjoyable show. We always love going to the agricultural shows – must be something to do with all the animals! Rather fittingly, we took lots of photos of highland cows this year

and witnessed the unusual sight of a rather large cow at the “beauty salon” - hair being brushed and blow dryed!

One of our Highland Cow designs

There were also lots of sheep at the show, but the most interesting could be found in the Campaign for Wool tent. The Campaign for Wool is focused on the many benefits that can be gained from using wool including its durability and the fact that it is a natural and renewable source of fibre. The campaign also highlights the variety of different industries that use wool; fashion, carpets and rugs, and the building trade. 

While in the tent, we saw the winners of the “fleece competition” – a competition that was previously unknown to me (but obviously not to Penny who sometimes seems to be weirdly fascinated by dirty fleeces!), but interesting none the less. The soundtrack for the tent was a variety of different “baas” coming from some lovely Blue Faced Leicesters, Shetlands, and our favourite a Scottish Blackface ram. While the ram was very handsome, he was somewhat reluctant when it came to photos! However, we persisted and came away with this: (Gives me a headache just thinking of carrying that around all the time)

The Highland Show is more commercially biased, it seemed to me, than other agricultural shows that we’ve been to. The farm animals were mostly the commercial breeds, and no pigs, or goats. The Royal Norfolk Show, which piggy backed onto the Highland show, has a much wider variety of breeds with some lovely rare and minority breeds. I couldn't resist this endearing face, belonging to a coloured Ryeland:

Also, with the dog show running alongside, there’s more opportunity to see lots of dog breeds – I now hanker after a husky, a collie and a long haired red dachshund....!

Next up for us is the Great Yorkshire Show, I wonder what we’ll see there!

Emma