Otley beats weather as show season gets off to a flying start

OTLEY SHOW shrugged off a week of downpours to launch the Yorkshire show season more or less as scheduled.

The decision to press on regardless was rewarded by a day of cloud and cold but not much worse.

In the sheep show, supreme champion was a Texel from local farmer Mark Keighley, of Leathley.

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Sophie Preston, of Bingley, Bradford, celebrated her 12th birthday with a win in the booming Zwartbles section, showing a shearling she prepared with her dad, Harry, a director of the breed association.

In beef, the supreme champion came from the odds-and-sods competition, Any Other Pure Breed – a Blonde heifer which Andrew Craven, of Fangfoss, York, bought at Carlisle when she was two weeks old.

Runner-up was a young home-bred Limousin bull shown by the Summers family, of Clayton, Bradford.

Phillip Summers, a highways maintenance contractor, grew up on the Clayton estate, in a family of 10, where he and a brother dreamed of farming. Now the brother, John Summers, is a butcher in Clayton and the two of them run Limousins and fatten crosses for beef with the help of their families.

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In dairy, the supreme champion was a Holstein from Stuart Wood, who has managed to stay in business with 60 milkers at Leppington, near Malton, by working around the country as a cattle groom for sales and shows.

Arena band was the Yorkshire Volunteers – also booked for the Great Yorkshire Show. It used to be part of the TA but kept going after the regiment wound up and is busier than ever, according to drum major Dave Rimmer, an imposing old soldier who works as a postman for the Blubberhouses area.

“We look good from a distance, that’s the secret,” he confided.

See fuller report online at www.yorkshirepost.co.uk

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