Balmoral Show 2024: All smiles as record crowds flock to Northern Ireland's agri-food showpiece

The final day, Saturday, was crammed with visitors, with many observers suggesting that footfall was noticeably up.

From mid-morning there were long queues of cars backed up into the A1 road near Sprucefield and all the other approach roads to the Maze site.

It was mild and cloudy all morning but the sun burned through as forecast and by mid afternoon it was almost perfect conditions for the agricultural, food, livestock and equestrian event.

Crowds of all ages wandered from food tents to clothes retailers to garden stores and exhibitions and sporting and cattle competitions.

It has been good weather all week as politicians, Royal Ulster Agricultural Society (RUAS) and business figures mingled with showgoers in a show that marked the total emergence from the lingering impact of the Covid restriction years .

RUAS group operations director Rhonda Geary said that 12 months of hard work and planning went extremely well.

She confirmed that according to provisional figures so far, it was the largest-ever attendance over the four days of the show.

“Yes it would be,” she said. “We know that we had just over 120,000 visitors this year.”

They had been hoping for a typical footfall of 100,000.

“We were very pleased,” she told the News Letter. “We could not have asked for any better weather."

The forecast the week before predicted it to be cloudy with some rain, “but it always comes through for us” she added.

Friday and Saturday were the busiest days, but all four days were noticeably busier than usual, she said.

One factor may have been that the very popular North West 200 motorcycle race ran a week earlier this year – normally both events are on the same weekend.

“Maybe that's something to do with it, I don't know.”

There are no plans to discuss avoiding future clashes with the NW 200 organisers though.

“Not really, I mean, they have to fit in with the motorbike calendar, which is completely understandable. But we're not really competing events really.

“People tend to do both as they can go on a Thursday evening to the motorbikes and come to the show on a Saturday.”

Possible factors for the record footfall she said are the change in NW 200 dates, and a possible increase in the number of schools which attended.

“It's just as hard to know until we drill down deeper into the figures. It just seemed busier every day.

“I would just say it has been a very successful show, with very happy exhibitors and visitors. Everybody had a smile on their face and we had a fantastic number of entries, almost 4,000 animals competing and almost 600 trade stands.

“Having the poultry back was a big thing for us too – almost 500 birds. They are such a popular part of the show.

“There were no major incidents or accidents, everything just ran very well.”

Ulster Farmers’ Union president William Irvine, a dairy farmer from Mountnorris in Co Armagh, agreed the weather was a key factor.

“I thought it was an excellent show this year,” he said. “We got lots of positive comments from the Republic of Ireland and GB visitors. They thought it was a great show and liked the fact that it was on a permanent site with good walkways and infrastructure.”

The southern annual ploughing show is larger but is held in autumn and is grass based, so sometimes it can sometimes be a washout, one visitor told him.

A GB visitor was impressed that the show still remains strongly farm focused, which can be difficult to achieve in GB, he said.

“I thought the attendance was very big, very possibly more than would normally attend.

“I think people were ready for a day out after a long dreary winter. And because the weather was good, morale was good.

“The whole winter was so wet, from mid-summer last year. If it still had been raining over the four days of the show I think morale would have been in a very different place.”

Richard Beattie, president of the Young Farmers Clubs of Ulster, said many of their 3,600 members loved the chance to meet up for a wide range of events.

They organised competitions in sheep shearing, wool handling, floral art, football and the much loved tug-of-war, with 26 teams, male and female.

“The main part of the show for us is the social aspect,” he said.

“We have been very lucky with good weather, it has been an extremely difficult nine months for many farms and farming families in terms of weather, prices and government policy.

“So the good weather really changed the mood for everybody and really gave us something to look forward to. Young farmers tell us they like to leave the farm behind for an evening and get out for a night to socialise – and they especially love the tug-of-war competitions.

“You'll see a lot of past members out supporting the teams. It is a good way for people to socialise, which is very important to us.”