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Judging Cheese at the Chipping Show

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Published 1998

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It rains at the Chipping Show. It has rained at the Chipping Show every year for the last fourteen years. It doesn’t matter what sort of summer we’re having, it rains at the Chipping Show. Some years are sloppy years and some years are squelchy. This was a squelchy year. That’s what the folk who man the tents and stalls, and bring their cattle, pigs, sheep, shire horses, hens, ducks, cheeses, flapjacks and cakes all say, and they don’t let it bother them.

Chipping is a small village on the edge of the Trough of Bowland. ‘Chipping,’ says the Ribble Valley Guide, ‘is a picturesque village on the slopes above the River Loud.’ And so it is, with its seventeenth-century school and almshouses, twelfth-century church, stone-built houses and three pubs.