Last year, our trip to Earls Barton was the first August Bank Holiday weekend rally we’d done since we abandoned our involvement with the late AVMEC Floods Ferry Vintage Country Show near March. This year, temptation was placed in our way to attend the inaugural North Cambridgeshire Country Show on that same showground, but the warm welcome and friendly atmosphere at Earls Barton won the day quite early on.

However, one member of the Fens Vintage team did duck out and join some other locals at Floods Ferry to recce the event and report back. Sadly, it was perhaps not the correct decision as both exhibits and visitors were thin on the ground, even to the extent that the Floods Ferry event was declared closed mid-morning on Monday and our team member was home by 12.30pm.

One has to question the business strategy behind the North Cambridgeshire Vintage Show, organised by someone prominently involved with the Carrington Rally in recent years. Upon making enquiries earlier in the year, one was admonished that the event was not a rally but a country show, and that any vintage exhibits were requested to be of the veteran or vintage era, not post-war, classic or modern. The event was most definitely not a rally but a country fair.

But perhaps the organisers had forgotten that the long-established Fenland Country Fair at Stow-cum-Quy has been held for around 30 years, and pulls in approximately 20,000 people from the Cambridge area on the Bank Holiday Sunday and Monday. Perhaps they’d hoped for a slice of that particular game pie but then you need to offer such country pursuits such as fly-fishing demos, falconry displays, gun dogs, heavy horses, etc. Sadly, there was little of this at the North Cambridgeshire show.

With just a few vintage rally exhibits, a craft tent, a few trade stands and a small fairground to fall back on, the rally aspect was virtually all there was. At least the local steam engine owners supported the event with a trio of road rollers and sundry other working machinery powered by petrol stationary engines, but most vintage exhibitors were either at Earls Barton, Stow-cum-Quy or on their way to the Great Dorset Steam Fair.

The colour circular we saw before the show advertised an admission cost of £7, which I believe was cut to £5 in the weeks before the show. This was obviously in response to the expected level of attractions likely to be on offer, but sadly the public did not come and support this fledging event. Those that did were apparently disappointed with their value for money and the fact that the few attractions were scattered to all corners of the showground rather than concentrated in one area for best effect was not a plus point.

For us, I believe Earls Barton will continue to offer a better atmosphere for the August Bank Holiday, but it remains to be seen whether the disappointment of 2008 can be overcome and the North Cambridgeshire Country Show carries on.