The Royal Welsh Show 2026

    Back to Le Pays Des Galles Profond, and the Royal Welsh Show 2026.  This time, instead of taking the train, we drove over from the Infernal City, over the Brecon Beacons and down into the Usk Valley, past Brecon and down into the valley of the Wye to Builth Wells.

     The show site, lies, a great festal city of tents and caravans, over the Wye from the town.  For the farming community of the principality and beyond a place of pilgrimage - almost.  For the younger members of that community a passage rite.

     This was our second visit, and it was both busy and hot.  We must have spent about four hours there and yet I realise we barely skimmed the surface.  How could it be otherwise?  The show lasts for four days, and there are a good twelve hours of events each day.  Like all the other visitors we were merely spectators while the 'Great Work' of show, the judging of livestock etc continued around us.  Two worlds rubbing along amicably, but with some element of incomprehension.  Sadly for us, and a great many others, this is our one connection to the farming community.

     Lunch at Hafod a Hendre.  Where the exhibitors eat.

     But for me it was not always so.  I was raised between the Wars,   in a small market town in s Lincolnshire.  My grandfather was a local butcher (at one time, he had to slaughter the animals he bought to sell in his shop).  He had a flock of sheep and owned a few fields.  Chickens were kept.  The town then, in the Late 60/early 70s, had a weekly cattle market, and a busy twice weekly street market.  There were also a number of farm supply shops, places to buy tractors and other kit, a grain merchants and straw merchants, the later had a Royal Warrant.  And then, over a couple of decades or so, perhaps less, it all went.

    The livestock market was the first to go - the victim of what?  The EEC CAP farming policy, which in East Anglia and the East Midlands, at least, encouraged massive over-production of cereals, or a desire to tidy things up and centralise that sort of messiness?  It resulted, eventually, to a whole area, being redeveloped.  A long length of North St was demolished - a smashing if domineering Victorian office block, a Georgian shop and a long building - Judges - with a Georgian Gothick stone front concealing a Medieval timber structure.  Listed Grade II in 1977, and left to rot for a decade by the developer.  Gone.  All of it gone.  And in their place a cheap hideous shopping centre that has never really had a full occupancy except for the expediency of charity shops.  All the worse considering that in London the 'Comyn Ching Triangle' was then just about complete.*

     Next to fall was was the twice weekly street market, for understandable reasons it was moved to a car park but within a month it had collapsed; the Saturday market often reduced to single stall.  And with it and the other changes the whole social life centred around the market collapsed too.  For people living in the surrounding villages life became smaller.

    I suppose one can understand some of the councils actions but the effect was deadening, a sort embourgeoisement of the public space.  It became 'safe', but I prefer the cabbage stalks, the straw, and the dung.

* I once tried to introduce one of our councillors - a friend of the family - to the New Urbanism, but it was like talking to a brick wall.

  

     

The Royal Welsh Show

      Yesterday and a trip along the picturesque and busy Mid-Wales line to Builth deep in the Le Pays de Galles Profonde, and day 3 of the annual Royal Welsh Show.  Our first visit and my first visit to an agricultural show in years - as a child there were trips to the Lincolnshire show and the East of England Show and, possibly, the Royal Norfolk Show.  The overcast sky and then the rain did little to dampen our curiosity, and we did a lot of walking. Fascinating in themselves, these events are far more importantly integral to rural life - farming can be a rather lonely way of life, and agricultural shows, like market days, are a means of connecting the farming community.  They are also a concrete example of the Enlightenment and the Agricultural Revolution in which competition was used as a means of improving animal husbandry.
    The Royal Welsh is also an important social event in the life of Wales as a whole and indeed the rest of the UK with competitors coming from all the home nations.  It was, as you can image, very busy, and a first visit can be a little overwhelming as there is so much to see - countless trade stands, events and most importantly the competitions.  

     Growing up in a small Lincolnshire market town in the late Sixties & early Seventies there was a weekly cattle market.  Sadly, these local markets have now, by and large, been closed and the increasing urbanisation of the UK, the growth of supermarkets, and the urbanisation of culture generally has led to more of a distance between country and town.  Events such as The Royal Welsh are a very important way to link these two communities.  No farmers, no food.

St Mary, Builth Wells

     Last week's jaunt took us up into Powys and Llandridnod Wells, Builth and Llanwrtyd Wells.  Llandridnod is a quite extraordinary place, as though a late nineteenth century suburb of London had been uprooted and then dropped into rural  mid-wales - all Queen Anne revival, Olde English, plus the odd splash of Gothic revival, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau.  A rather laid back sort of place, perhaps lacking in direction.  I have never seen so many intact Victorian and Edwardian shop fronts.  Extraordinary.  But far too many parked cars to make photography easy.

     Then on to Builth Wells, one of the three market towns of the old county of Breconshire. (It still has a functioning cattle market - quite a rare thing to find these days esp for someone like me from eastern England where most have disappeared.) A small attractive place hugging the south bank of the Wye with a long, narrow high street. There is plenty to admire both in terms of townscape and individual buildings - though there was nothing outstanding.  I did however like the neo-Georgian Post Office.
     As with Llandridnod, Builth's heyday was probably in the nineteenth century - everything spoke of a relatively comfortable provincial life.  Food, however, was my big concern as we were walking around but I did make the effort and take some pictures of the parish church. To be honest since visiting Oystermouth and Llancarfan I've been a bit hesitant to take photographs of churches - hence I snapped nothing of the slightly bizarre, and florid, Holy Trinity, Llandridnod.

     St Mary's Builth, standing in a large graveyard full of monuments, is a mix of Victorian and Medieval. The tower is massive and blunt, 13th centrury; the church, which dates from 1875 and is the work of John Norton, is High Victorian Gothic, muscular and tough. Mincer-plate tracery in some of the windows. Perhaps a little unlovely though well detailed in places.  Hard to believe it is nearly 150 years old - will it ever weather and mellow? The east end of tower, chancel and organ chamber is well composed.  But all together more successful perhaps if the interior wasn't so cold and cavernous. It's the sort of building that Bodley should have got hold of and decorated within an inch of its life. At present it just looks tatty and barren. It really needs some help.  I'm pretty sure I saw day-light through the roof.

     I suppose too that as a gay man I ought to be grateful that this place trumpets its inclusiveness. It however does nothing for me. A church is a temple of transformation, God orientated, where the worshipper encounters and participates in and with the divine, it is not a place for the semi-secular centred upon our selves. For all the well meaning banners etc I really couldn't worship there. Sorry to bang on about this yet again but I'm slowly feeling my Anglicanism wither and die and it's a far from pleasant experience.  Trouble is that being an Anglican these days is hardly intellectually or spiritually or even aesthetically satisfying.