No walk needed for the dogs this morning (other than the obligatory squat n pop) We are going to the most British thing you can do during the spotty British summer. We are off to Shrewsbury Steam Fair!
For those unaccustomed, a Steam Fair is where time has stood still for at least 100 years. And today is the day the anoraks that have been caring for these old machines venture out of their sheds to show them off. But not only steam engines; tractors, old cars, old Landovers (because that’s different), vintage motorbikes, old buses, old trucks, even static steam, diesel and petrol engines just being run for the heck of it. Basically anything that existed before the Euro NCAP and the invention of pollution.
Parking in a field, we found the only modern part of the day, the entry scanned our QR code tickets, and we ventured inside. There didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the fair at first. Everything seemed to be arranged randomly around a large square display area.
We wandered around randomly for a while till we realised all the vehicles were arranged in sections. One after another the sections of vehicles all filed into the display area where a WWII tannoy announced in a gloriously British accent who, what and when these vehicles were made.
Daito was going ballistic. There was just so much exciting stuff everywhere to sniff and chase and pee on! It was really hard work keeping him under wraps. He’s massive now and really powerful. But pretty soon he was turning his head from one thing to the next so quickly he couldn’t investigate it all and sort of gave up. And then so long as other dogs didn’t get too close, he was pretty well behaved. When we stopped on a patch of grass near the display area, he pretty happily settled next to Nala while we had some lunch.
There were lots of stands on one side of the arena with all sorts of gubbins. Edd and Kai wandered off like toddlers in a candy store, looking at tools and gizmos. Mel sauntered along behind with Thistle bouncing off the end of the lead into all the clothes stores investigating everything. Any time she came near Daito she wriggled up sideways, flirting, and then lay on her back displaying herself. Of course Daito was muzzle deep in her belly every time, becoming very good friends.
It was hard to keep together as a group with so much to look at. But we bumbled along just mooching thru the stands, getting stopped occasionally for people to fawn over the dogs. Kayto got called a fox a few times and Daito was stroked a lot. He’s got no problem with random people coming up to him now, which is a really good thing. He was getting tired tho so I headed off to find a place to sit at the edge of the arena. No sooner had I arrived but the tannoy announced that the main attraction, the Steam Engine parade would be in 20 mins. I called around the group to rustle them up and soon they arrived.
This was truly a sight to see, yet, surprisingly quiet. For some reason I imagined steam engines to chuff and rattle as much as steam trains. But thinking about it now, they weren’t pulling any weight and they were running on grass, not clanky steel rails. So they sort of hissed their way sedately into the display area, gleaming in the sun.
Almost all of them were gloriously decorated and cared for. These machines were the height of technology when they were made, like F1 cars are fettled and waxed and treated with reverence. They were made beautifully and maintained exquisitely well by passionate and proud men, a far cry from the dirty and (judging from the lack of work on all the major uk roads) lackadaisical tar slingers we have today. Apparently some steam engines had been used commercially in fields and on roads right up into the 70’s. But most had transitioned to pulling and then generating power for travelling fairs. The gayly decorated novelty engines attracted attention chuffing thru towns and showmen competed to make theirs the most amazing spectacle.
We went to the fairground rides just before the end of our day. It wasn’t the typical onslaught of flashing lights and techno music, like everything else, this was stuck in a time vortex 100 years ago. Everything was painted as beautifully at the traction engines with flickering incandescent bulbs and show tunes being played perfectly by an automatic organ. This was wonderfully high/low tech. A chap was sitting behind the trailer with a car boot full of punch card bundles. I explained to Aimi that this was effectively how the early computers ran code. Their programmes were punched into cards, like this, and then run thru the computer. This machine just used the 1’s and 0’s of the holes in the card to turn on and off the various air valves to play music. It was another beautiful example of the highest technology of the time continuing to entertain modern crowds.
