The decision that no one wanted – but was right for the conditions

It was about 6.15pm that Bill Cowling, honorary show director of the Great Yorkshire Show, uttered the words that he and his fellow organisers had so desperately hoped he would never say: “We are going to have to close the show”.

Mr Cowling had just emerged from a 45-minute meeting in which the decision was taken. I was waiting patiently outside the door.

Throughout the day he and the army of stewards and assistants that make the show so successful had been working as hard as they could to avoid the move but in the end, the horrendous weather had prevailed.

My first thoughts were of the practical sort. At this stage I would normally be filing my final stories for the next morning’s newspaper. This announcement was going to alter that radically.

Then, as myself, Mr Cowling and the head of press relations were ferried across the site in a golf buggy to inform the rest of the country’s media it began to dawn on me what a seismic move this would be.

The Yorkshire Show had been stopped before, by war and disease, but it had never been cancelled because of the weather and never after having opened.

Mr Cowling was understandably downbeat yet had the air of a man who had been relieved somewhat of a burden. For the past few days he and his team had been working around the clock to make sure the event would still go ahead but a further deluge at 3pm had made parts of the showground unusable.

It had become a question of safety. The Yorkshire Show is important but it is not worth someone getting hurt.

Even before the latest thunderstorm it was obvious that the Show was going to endure one of the more challenging days in its proud history.

As I approached the showground at about 6.45am, when normally roads are clear even when the show is on, the traffic was already beginning to back up.

Weeks of heavy rain, including the wettest June on record, were taking their toll.

Realistically there was nothing more the organisers, the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, could do.

Park-and-Ride facilities had been established elsewhere in Harrogate to save visitors parking their cars in water-saturated fields, with visitors for the next day urged to use public transport.

However, there were fresh problems with the fields where exhibitors park their vans and cars – these were turning to mud as well.

On the showground itself things were relatively fine. Bales of miscanthus straw was laid on muddy patches and early visitors were enjoying chats and early judging classes.

However, soon word began to filter in of the problems.

Cars were being towed by tractors around the fields, a not uncommon site at the showground in previous years. However, this was 9am and the majority of visitors were yet to arrive, with huge queues of traffic surrounding Harrogate.

At 9.30am organisers put out the word, if you have not set off yet do not bother and if you do not have an advance ticket for the remaining days please do not drive.

The mid-afternoon showers brought the attention back to the show’s existence itself.

Judging for the supreme beef title had to be moved onto the showground’s concrete avenues and the main ring, the focal point of the showground, became so sodden that it had to be announced that no further equine classes would take place.

These two developments brought into question whether or not the show would be able to continue at all and when I got wind of the fact that show chiefs were meeting I headed straight to the main offices where the receptionists were dealing with non-stop phone calls from the public looking for answers.

Mr Cowling was philosophical about the move. He is a show director and naturally doesn’t want to cancel any show, least of all England’s premier farming event and one he has been associated with for decades.

However, it was clearly the right decision to make and one that no right-minded person would question. The Yorkshire Show is obviously a farming showcase but it is also a means of bringing people together. If those people cannot safely travel there then what is the point?

With the multi-million pound turnover the Yorkshire Show yields it is easy to forget that the Yorkshire Agricultural Society is a charity, doing great work in rural communities around the region. The move will hit their pockets hard.

However, show chiefs are already promising a bigger and better than ever show next year, as well as investment to make sure it is never called off due to weather again.

It’s hard to see it now but I am confident that the organisers will look back in years to come and see the decision to cancel as one of the proudest moments, doing what is right in the face of all of their instincts.

And I further doubt Mr Cowling, or anyone who holds his role, will ever have to utter those words again.