Editorial: Crowds flock to another successful Balmoral Show at the Maze site

​It is now more than four years since the arrival of coronavirus on these shores.

​After the huge disruption that the pandemic caused in 2020, spilling into 2021 and beyond, many aspects of life are finally back to normal.

Air passenger traffic numbers, for example, only returned to normal levels last year, 2023, after collapsing in 2020, staying severely depressed in 2021, and still below normal in 2022.

At home, the Balmoral Show was cancelled in 2020, as were major events across the United Kingdom.

Restrictions on gatherings were such that there wasn’t even a show in May 2021, as would be the normal time, but rather the event returned in the autumn of that year. It was a challenge for the organisers, who had only been settling into their new site at Balmoral Park between the 2013 first show out of the King’s Hall and the last pre-covid event in 2019.

By May 2022 Balmoral was back to its normal place in the season at this agreeable time of the calendar, mid May. That was a successful show. Last year even more so.

The crowds this year, which culminates today, might top them all. Last evening it took even longer than normal for the massive number of visitors’ cars to leave Balmoral Park.

In part it is a reflection of the weather, which has been often sunny, at worst mild and lightly cloudy. Today is set to be mostly blue skies.

It is also a reflection of the success of the Maze site, which feels less crammed than the much-loved but constrained King’s Hall location.

With hindsight, particularly in light of the Casement fiasco, the Maze would have been a good site for a single sports stadium.

It is too late for that, but it at least works well as a location for Balmoral. The best of Northern Ireland food, agriculture, livestock and equestrian is on display at this show, which has easily expanded into a four-day event, from three a few years ago.