My, what a big gooseberry! Scales come out for Egton Bridge's finest

The annual show organised by the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society in Egton Bridge, near Whitby. Picture: Danny Lawson/PA Wire

THEY brought out the scales again today for one of Yorkshire's oldest and most traditional competitions: the search for the biggest gooseberry in Egton Bridge.

Since the show was established in 1800, finding the heaviest gooseberry has become an annual tradition in the North York Moors village.

The same set of scales has been used since 1935 to weigh gooseberries in Drams and Grains, a system originally based on the weight of a grain of barley.

Only members of Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society can enter berries into the competition. Gardeners enter their biggest gooseberries into one of four classes: red, yellow, greens and white. This year Graeme Watson scooped the top prize with his a gooseberry weighing 26 Drams and 16 Grains.

Gooseberry fairs were common in Yorkshire until the first world war, and the Egton Bridge event is one of the few to survive.