Brailes Country Show – cars, cake and Mardis Gras

Considering the village of Brailes is pretty small, they do put on a good country show, so we had to go along this year. The theme was Mardis Gras, and there was a prize for the best dressed wheelbarrow.  We didn’t enter (I even forgot about the children’s fancy dress so N wasn’t taking part), but some of the entries were ingenious.  My photos didn’t come out, but there was the Batmobile driven by Batman and Robin, and a brilliant tank, complete with a child inside it.  Brilliant fun. In the arena there were various activities and displays.  We joined in with the Calypso Kids music session.  We seemed to be the only ones who didn’t go to their classes…or we’re just rubbish at knowing songs!

5-little-fishes.

N as usual, was moaning he was hungry so he chose a cake at the WI refreshments stand.  Lemon meringue cupcake chosen, carried carefully outside to a hay bale and then sitting and eating it all.  No chance of me getting a taste.We mooched over to see the classic car displays and vintage tractors

cupcake-carrier.

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classic car dashboard
3 wheel tractor
mardis gras flower theme
go karting

N was taken with the steam engines, but you couldn’t get that close to those.  Not that it mattered when the vehicles all did a few laps of the ring for everyone to see them properly. I don’t usually go in to the judging tents to see the entries to the veg, cake and flower competitions, but I thought my friend had entered so we went in to have a look.  The flowers were beautiful and I did take lots of photos of them.  The crafts were lovely, the produce looked good.  I had a good look at the photography entries – some made me think that I could enter some of my photos next year.  And while the cakes looked good enough to eat, some of the scones weren’t really Great British Bake Off worthy, giving hope to us all. I fancied a Pimms but the bar tent had a huge queue, so we had to make do with another wander round.  We watched the people getting wrapped up by snakes in the reptile tent, N checked out the toy lawn mowers that were for sale and watched the karting.  I think next year he’ll be old enough to go on the karts so that’ll make for a very happy boy. I did pay for him to have some goes on the bouncy slide.  I hoped, after paying, that he would make it up to the top (and want to slide down, given there were other children who then had to be coaxed back down the way they’d climbed up.  But no, N was well away his first 3 slides.  Then stood at the top to make sure I was there before he came down quite happily.  Nice to see him having some courage to come down what looked like a high slide to me!

bouncy pink-slide

I thought N would have liked to watch the horse show going on, but he wasn’t keen.  A fleeting go on some of the playground equipment in the corner of the fieldbumping into a few friends and nursery staff, and then it was time to head off. I do love to check out country shows and village fetes, but we’ve not been to many this year.  Hopefully there’ll be a few more before the summer’s out.

on-the-climbing-frame.

Do you go to local shows?  What’s your favourite part?

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20 Comments

  1. This looks a great day out 🙂 I went up and down one of those slides and it was scary as heck for me! Haha! #MagicMoments

    1. Aw, you need to get out to some…time a weekend break away somewhere there’s some on. Great fun, although hard to say no and not spend money on rides!

    1. They are a bit like that. Even our 2 nearest villages I rely on seeing the signs along the road because the free village leaflets get dropped at the farm, and there’s only one copy – even though there’s 2 houses. I never get to see them. But I have to write events in my phone as I spot them, so can plan in advance. Oh, plus I’m rubbish at organising to see friends who’re usually doing family things at weekends, so we only have to worry about N and I

  2. This looks fab, and I love some of the local fetes, we are hoping ours will be back next year, as have missed it this year. Looks like you had lots of fun though.

    1. It’s definitely hard to juggle when quite frequently there’s several things on one day. I missed all the big village musical events this year for other things, so they’re on my list next year.

  3. I haven’t been to a country show for a few years but I do enjoy them. There’s a cheese based one near us next month so might be tempted! Love the lemon meringue cupcake – lucky boy! #countrykids 🙂

    1. Cheese based one sounds interesting. We went to one today which said there’s be farmers’ food stalls, but I only spotted bees/honey which was a bit disappointing.

  4. That looks like a lot of fun. We haven’t been to anything like that since we moved to the US, our local community events are on a much smaller scale, but there are some local farm shows and fairs, we should really make the effort to get along to one. It sounds like there was loads to do at this one x #CountryKids

    1. There’s always other things that clash with them, so makes it hard to go. Hope you get to some though – would be great to see the differences in US vs UK ones

  5. Oh what a fab day out! Looks beaut. I love a little fair and that cake looks totally amazing. And the way kids go down those crazy slides terrifies me! xxx

  6. Looks like you had a marvelous time, we have quite a few country shows around here and I try to take the kids to as many as possible. Dropping by from Magic Moments.

  7. Aaagh! We normally try to go to this, but had something on this weekend so didn’t make it. Looks like it was great fun though! We love Emma-Jane Roberts at Calypso Kids! PS love N’s shark t-shirt!

    1. It was. Weather held off til the evening. Local shows and events are great…especially as often you’ll bump into lots of people you know.

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