The cost of cancelling the Great Yorkshire Show will run to around £2m with organisers vowing never to let the weather jeopardise the show again.
The three-day farming showcase at Harrogate’s Great Yorkshire Showground was called off late on Tuesday (July 10) after the car parks surrounding the site were turned into a mud bath.
Cars were having to be towed around the car park from as early as 9am with weeks of heavy rain having taken a heavy toll on the site.
All ticket holders for yesterday and today are being offered a full refund or the option of using their tickets for next year’s show.
The losses will be absorbed by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, the charity which organises the event.
Its chief executive Nigel Pulling told the YEP that the atmosphere yesterday on the showground, which routinely pulls in more than 130,000 visitors for the show, was “surreal” and “eerie” without the general public.
However, he also vowed that the lessons of this year’s wash-out would be learned and that the show would be back “bigger and better” than ever next year.
Mr Pulling said: “We will be looking at what we did right and what we did wrong and learning the lessons so that this never happens again.
“If that involves more drainage and changes to car parking then so be it.”
Mr Pulling also said that he had been touched by the support the decision had been greeted with by the public.
“We have had huge numbers of emails and letters supporting us and that has helped us be able to pick ourselves up,” he said.
“We have had a few people saying that we should not have gone ahead at all and some saying we should have soldiered on – which leads me to think we have got the balance right.
“Thinking back on the amount of work that has gone on it is heartbreaking, there were a fair few tears here yesterday. Everyone was working into the early hours of Sunday and Monday to deal with the rain.
“Yorkshire farmers deal with variable weather conditions and we will do the same.”
Cattle, sheep and pig judging still went ahead yesterday behind closed doors despite the absence of the general public.
To claim your refund visit: www.greatyorkshireshow.co.uk
Comments