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Royal Show,used to be Smithfield,?


catkom3

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was last week joe going by this post about Donald from well hung and tender on facebook

Well... The Donald may recently have been made a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society but he's getting called other names here. He's obviously had a wild time at Smithfield. We didn't hear from him for a quite a while and,when we did, he'd lost his phone and we've had to post him the spare keys for the truck so he can drive home from Peterborough!!! Now....if I'd lost the keys.....

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The show at Earls Court was The Royal Smithfield Show to give it it's correct handle, it was always held in December but due to the cost of staging the event and cost to exhibit it finally closed down in about 1998, I have fond memories of going to the Show several years running during the 1970's, a group of our Young Farmers Club members would catch the 6.00am train from Exeter St David's Station and, barring delays and breakdowns, arrive at Paddington Station around 9.15am and then take the underground 'tube' to Earls Court and get out under the exhibition centre, up the stairs and straight into the main hall, spent the morning looking around the tractor and machinery stands, blagging posters and badges and any other freebees we could get, then had lunch in the restaurant and then the afternoon looking around the livestock and other stuff. When the Show closed to the public at 6.00pm we would hit Carnaby Street looking in all the shops and then onto Soho, some of us would go and see a live theatre show, one I remember was featuring Edward Woodward and Michelle Dotrice, forget the title, others would go into a cinema and watch one of the latest film releases, on one occasion it was Ryan's Daughter. Whilst walking along in Soho we would constantly be accosted by the doormen outside the strip clubs wanting us to go in but we always said that we could not afford the £5 entrance, they would keep negotiating this and many would of let us in for 50p but we never did. After taking in a film or show we would then go into a posh looking restaurant  for an affordable meal, we found out that if we kept talking to each other around the table in our broadest Devonshire dialect we could muster the waiters would keep coming with food and drink just to listen to us talking, we were well fed. Back to Paddington station in time to catch the midnight train back to Exeter, this was also the Mail train and stopped at almost every station, we arrived back at Exeter at 6.00am and then home, just in time to have a cup of tea and then milk the cows.

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  • 1 month later...

It's a shame both shows are no longer on . Went to the royal every year . Went to the Smithfield a couple of times that was a good show . Just typical of this country everything so expensive to stage or the wrong people in charge of the shows .

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Like most agricultural and machinery shows nowadays, the organisers are too greedy and want a fortune for a pitch and this is why they are going to the wall, Westpoint Arena, the Exeter site, it costs £10,000 just to hire the big building for 3/4 a day just for the toy fairs so what it must be for the Devon County Show is anyone's guess! Another factor is in that there are now no UK machinery manufacturers in the numbers that were in the 60's and 70's and before and the face of agriculture has changed.

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ur so right power rabbit

 

I remember going to royal Smithfield in 1988 .....I was brilliant to the 16 yrold keen to learn everything he could about

farming    remember the big trailed blue and yellow combine harvester there

im sure I saw the last line of CASE/IH 1394s 1494s 1594s there too

I realy like the deutz  commander aswell  KRAMER loading shovels .....the MF 390 next to the datatronics

ford 7610s 7810s  I think ford were bragging up there new digi dash on the 10 series .......welga balers kidd foragers  there was a bloke demonstrating the manual tyre bead buster too ha ha

 coming out of erlscourt  getting ripped off buying pint passing off as 18 ha

then making our way back to marble arch via the tube and bein accousted buy some dodgy ladies of night

falling asleep on coach on the way home    good memories

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