Stroud Show endures through wet weather

President of the Stroud Show committee James Harris said that the show had over 2000 people in attendance despite the weather on Saturday, April 6 and Sunday, April 7.

"We're really, really pleased with it. We're obviously down in numbers because of the rain on Friday but to have it fine on Saturday morning and have all those people come on a very wet showground, the committee is ecstatic," he said.

"We had 75mm of rain here. We were absolutely stoked that so many people came to a wet show on a wet showground. Normally we would expect nearly double that on a dry day but we pulled a good little crowd in."

The heavy rainfall leading up to the show led to a number of organisational challenges culminating in the cancellation of a number of horse events including a six-bar event and their led and ridden classes.

However, this didn't stop the show from holding a full program on Sunday with 400 dogs and 100 showjumpers.

"We're very pleased that the ring was the only thing that we had to cancel, we still had a demolition derby, we had the fireworks and still had a really good rodeo that ran really smoothly," Mr Harris said.

"Everything went really well."

As with previous years, the biggest highlight for Mr Harris was the Saturday night fireworks.

Alongside the fireworks, he was blown away by the 32 riders who entered the rodeo and the nearly 100 riders doing show jumping.

One of the stranger aspects of the show was the split of entries between arts and craft and produce.

"It was a funny show in that produce was up but the arts and crafts were down for some reason, whether people don't have time we don't know," Mr Harris said.

"We had a lot of pumpkins and watermelons this year. Obviously the bit of rain kicked things along pretty nicely."

Although the committee isn't sure how much it raised, Mr Harris said that the funds will likely go towards a new set of stables.

"I'd say a fair bit will go into that," he said.