| Royal Highland Show 23rd June 2007 The Royal Highland Show the most prestigious event in the Scottish calendar sadly this year we couldn’t have wished for worse weather from early in the morning the heavens poured down upon us luckily it did dry of a little for some of the driving classes in the afternoon. This year though we had a huge amount of entrants with a total of 48 entries over the six classes. The Private Driving class had the largest number of entries with 17, 14 turned up on the day to brave the horrendous weather. It was great to see the show being well supported by our English counterparts and their immaculately presented turnouts sadly though neither they nor the Scottish got to show their turnouts to the best of their capabilities. This year the RHS had a huge amount of entrants across the board and with this our 2pm start was moved to 3pm, so there was a lot of waiting around also as the arenas were quite wet we were not able to compete in the normal arena where the show jumping is held as they did not want the arena churned up sadly I feel that the arena organisers were under the impression that we gallop around the arena rather than nice, elegant working trots so we had to endure competing in a small arena that even some local shows would not have. With the amount of entries it was a disaster waiting to happen and sadly this was the case in the Private Driving singles class for draught horses. The Private Driving class with all 14 entries was also put in this small arena and it was unfortunate for the competitors as they could not show of their turnouts as they had to slow down every few steps, not enjoyable and not entertaining for the small crowd who had gathered around the arena. The organisers had failed to announce that the driving was being held in a different arena, when the general public did find out the classes were being held else where (near the end of the judging I may add) they were unable to get near to the ring due to not having wristbands not very good for people with a interest in the sport. So sadly this year we were let down by the show organisers and it is a shame as the driving is something different for people to watch and learn about. I certainly do not want to put people of competing at the RHS but this year all the competitors felt let down by the show organisers and were not able to enjoy what is normally a great atmosphere and excellent show hopefully normal services will be resumed and we can again have a great show with a great number of competitors next year. The judge on the day was Mr R Lanni who found his Private Driving winner in Mike Clark driving his wonderful horse Thorneyside the Foreman. Mike was reserve champion with Jeff Osborne winning the HOYS ticket and championship with his lovely hackney Hamewith Lochnagar. In the multiples class Jane MacInnes was overall winner driving her lovely tandem and Elma Ball won another big class of the day the Shetland pony in harness well done to them all! The classes this year were all of very high standards and it is great to see such variety in the ring. PRIVATE DRIVING: 1st Thorneyside the Foreman – Mike Clark Report by Alan Miller |