Kent Show 2007 - overview

Our first visit to the Kent Show at Detling, and a great day out for us and the other 50,000 or so who were there. More pictures (86 altogether!) from today on Flickr.

Agricultural exhibits included a wide range of sheep, goats, cows, poultry, rabbit and horses, oh yes and llamas and alpacas - and a blacksmithing contest.

And some sort of elephant hiding inside a bull costume. I mean how big does a bull need to be for goodness sake?

The vintage section had the Detling steam fair and as many hissing, steaming bits of cast iron as you could shake a stick at, as well as a proper funfair. One with fairground organs. And a proper carousel.

And a vulture.

And raspberries.

And a dalek. It was a day of variety . . .

And of course the steam. I have a few more pictures of the steam - both the engines and the vintage funfair, and you can see them (and the other usable pictures I took today) on Flickr.

And then I found myself enjoying a flower show. Unbelieeeevable. But the Bonsai and Fuschia sections were amazing. The bonsai display from The Bonsai Shop in Whitstable was a particular treat.

The spitfire gave us a great display over the Parade of Steam, which seemed to satisfy pretty much everyone.

And later on there was that flying advert plane again - everywhere I go, he goes. I'm starting to wonder...

Show jumping, birds of prey, a spitfire for a few minutes and an aerial advertisment for a few minutes more, plus food, shopping, sunshine and - did I mention - crowds. Brilliant day. These are my favourite pictures of the day - you can go direct to my Flickr Set and see the lot as a slideshow if you're a real glutton for punishment.

And venturing in to the judging tents, it was nice to see a Ramsgate address on the label of the honey that won first prize. K P Flynn, whoever you might be, well done!

Oh yes, and thumbs up for organisation - no traffic problems, sensible parking, enough toilets, bins and catering, it all looked like an amazing triumph of planning. But then I suppose they have done it once or twice before... And we even found the car without difficulty. Grand.

And finally... in the spirit of completely unnecessary and intrusive celebrity spotting, TV auction man Michael Hogben clearly enjoyed the floral displays - but so did we all!