The Walpole Steam & Country Fayre has now firmly re-established itself in the vintage calendar since its 1970s heyday and seems to have become a successful event, with £1700 being raised for the East Anglian Air Ambulance in 2005. The atmosphere, on the edge of the village and within sound of the church clock chiming the quarters, is excellent and a credit to the organisers.

There were some improvements to the layout this year, which meant that the cars had the room they needed behind the catering vans, as we suggested last year, which filled out that section of the field and brought the late arrivals on the stationary engine line more into the show. With just a few bygone and model displays tucked out of the way to sort out, I would suggest they now have the blueprint for the site for a few years to come.

Commercial vehicles provided some fine local restored fleets of medium sized vehicles including Jack Richards' pair of ERFs from Fakenham, Derick Salter's Seddon, Foden & Commer from Sutton Bridge and Steve Palmer's ERF, Austin & Morris FJKs from Whittlesey. One vehicle I hadn't seen before was the Ergomatic cabbed Leyland Super Comet in orange & green livery of Wadsley's from Friday Bridge. Other Comet's on show were James Gowler's 1952 "Helldrivers" version and John Gowler's 1962 LAD-cabbed example, showing the design changes over three decades of British lorry manufacture.

Parked up in three or four lines next to the trucks were the vintage tractors. As one would expect, there were several grey Ferguson TE20s and Massey Ferguson 135s on show, including examples of the latter before and after restoration. Mr Gathercole's TEF20 with a typical small-holder's trailer loaded up for a trip to the market made a very interesting display, as did the Oppermann Motocart and 1929 Cletrac crawler with Bulldozer blade. The horticultural section was well represented with Ransomes and a fortnight after we purchased what we thought was a rare Russell of Edinburgh built steerage toolbar-frame for our Barford Atom at Holbeach, did we see an identical piece of equipment on display at Walpole!

However, there were some noticeable gaps in the line-up. Many vintage enthusiasts exhibit in more than one class, for example the Fordson on the back of a Foden lorry, and it was noticeable that there were two or three tractors parked up overnight on the stationary engine lines this year. Last year, this had been frowned upon and actively discouraged but with one owner having an early tractor worth in the region of £15k, the stewards must allow owners reasonable access to safeguard their property outside of public opening hours, especially when the event and its social entertainment, i.e. the beer tent, is virtually open-house to all-comers each evening.

The motorcycle section ranged from cheap moped-type machines such as the Raleigh Runabout at one end through the traditional BSAs and Nortons of the 1950s to examples of the 1970s Yamaha FS1E I grew up with and on to the American-style Harley-type Yamahas and Triumphs of the present day. Many of the cars had apparently been to Manea Gala on the Saturday, judging by the common display boards presented by several on Sunday, when attendance was roughly doubled. There were quite a few more 1930s cars in attendance this year, which broke up the more common 1960s & 70s classics nicely, a much more representative mix of vehicles.

This year was I think the best of the current run of events for steam exhibits with a total of nine full-size and at least half-a-dozen miniatures on show. Star of the show was undoubtedly the Fowler Showman's Road Loco "Repulse", generating power for its attendant 98-key Gavioli organ. Another splendid Fowler was Steve Ross's roller "Dorothy", and other rollers including the Copeman's 1917 Aveling & Porter, Roy Pratt's' 1922 Aveling & Porter and the Goakes' 1950 Aveling Barford, the youngest British manufactured steam roller. The Waling family's Foster & Chiappa organ made a welcome return, and the final three full-size machines were a 1920 Marshall traction engine, 1914 Mann wagon and Foden waggon.

Around the opposite two sides of the field were the stationary engine exhibitors, again as always with adequate room for camping and display. This basic courtesy is often missing at other events, and with the aid of a water bowser to fill the water butts, goes a long way to making us feel welcome. There were some nice vintage engines on show including a 1905 International vertical, 1917 Ingeco, 1911-12 Waterloo Boy and 1908-9 Galloway open cranks, as well as a trio of Petter M 11/2hp engines.

Dale Walker and associates showed his collection of Crossley engines and working equipment and at the opposite end of the scale was the "Homemaiden", as they say in Norfolk. The section of the line we parked in offered Bamford, Ruston Hornsby, Lister, Wolseley & Petter vertical engines running a Bentall corn mill, Hunt & Co. chaff cutter, Kenrick of West Bromwich corn mill, Lister water pump and unidentified forge blower. Possibly the noisiest machine was a Lister D-powered cement mixer, chucking its load of stones around, at least until someone quietened it down a little.

This leaves only the stalls and displays to comment on. The former offered a nice mix of stuff to browse around, including several junk or "cag" stalls. For a small show, they were plentiful model stalls and one reasonably priced model lorry has been added to the collection. A couple of the bygones and model displays were a little bit unfortunate in that they ended up been virtually out of sight behind some of the lorries, but that apart, I thought the show worked very well this year. See you next year on 14-15 July 2007.