ENTRANTS to Bream Show had the chance to win “Olympic” medals as the popular event gave a nod to this years Games in Paris.
With seven sections for vegetable and flower growing, handicrafts, cookery, honey, photography, crafts, cooking, photography and flower arranging the show organised by Bream Gardening Society had its own heptathlon.
Show secretary Elizabeth Gardner explained: “Because of the Olympics we thought we should do something different.
“We have seven sections so in every section we had a class that was either Olymopic or French-themed.
“We added the points from people who entered those classes and awarded gold, silver and bronze medals.”
Top of the podium, which was constructed from breeze blocks, was to Sue Hill – who also won the Royal Horticultural Society’s Banksian Medal – Trudi Breadman was runner-up and Suzanne Snowdon was in bronze medal position.
The show is now in its 159th year and is continuing to grow.
Ms Gardner said: “Three years ago we had half the number of entries we had last year. We didn’t think we would be able to keep it up but we had an even higher number of entries this year. We had 742 different entries from 102 adults and 20 children.
“We’re really proud of how we’ve grown it – we had to get a bigger tent this year. We are going to have think about what we do next year.
"We’ve got lots of members who moved to the area more recently and they have been winning a lot of the cups.
“We’ve got the stalwarts who have been doing it for years but we are getting people moving to the village and they want to be part of village life.
“Every meeting we have someone new who has just moved to the village from other parts of the country and they see the society as a way of meeting people and I basically badger them until they enter the show.”
For the first time in the three years that the “Battle of the Villages” with Yorkley has been run, the hosts won.
The award for the best exhibit in the show went to Julie Sparkes for a flower arrangement inspired by the industrial heritage of the Forest.