Last updated at 12:32, Tuesday, 17 November 2009

One of the best-loved annual summer events in Cumbria and one of the most prestigious, the Cumberland Show, has found a new home.

Following this year’s disappointing cancellation due to heavy rain and flooding fears in Rickerby Park, the show’s immediate future has been secured with a shift to Carlisle Racecourse.

Organisers hope up to 20,000 people will attend the event, on Saturday, July 17 when a new look will mark change of location and a festival of farming and food will demonstrate renewed confidence in the future.

Because the show has been held in Rickerby Park since 1991, event and site have become inseparable in the minds of many stalwart supporters, exhibitors and visitors from across Cumbria and beyond.

But this year’s cancellation taught the lesson that trusting to the luck of weather set fair on the day could no longer be an option. Quite apart from the money lost when the show was called off hours before it should have opened to the public, its future success had to be sealed with the confidence of a new, safe home.

Today’s announced partnership of well-loved county show with one of Cumbria’s premier events venues sets the scene for a marriage of tradition and modernity and takes the event’s destiny from the lap of the gods to return it to the experienced hands of its organisers.

First published at 11:38, Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk