The green car park will cater to visitors from western counties and the orange car park will hold spaces for vehicles travelling from Kildare.
There is also provision for bus parking. The site of the ploughing championships is km from Dublin, km from Cork, km from Belfast and km from Rosslare. The main exhibition area will be open from 9am to 6pm each day while the ploughing competitions run from There will be three fashion shows, running at Highlights of the three-day event include sheep shearing, live tractor build, sheep dog trials, loy digging, the meggars competition and the national brown bread baking event.
There is also a junior baking event and funfair for children. There is a special section with information on preparations for Brexit. The stand is also marking 25 years of diplomatic relations between Ireland and South Africa. Visitors can also apply for a passport directly from the Ploughing with free digital passport photographs available. Those coming to the ploughing are encouraged to travel by train and walk the minute journey from Tullamore station to the site where a shuttle bus runs to the entrance gate.
Drivers are warned to factor in at least double the normal journey time due to predicted heavy volumes of traffic. The Garda has designated eight colour-coded routes to and from the championships. Visitors on this route will park in the designated blue car parks on the left and right hand sides beside the event grounds. Visitors are also advised to dress appropriately ie warmly! They can also download the ploughing app for live event and traffic updates.
Wet and windy weather is expected to hit the country over the coming days as the downgraded tropical storm Helene crosses over Ireland. If you take the train Tullamore Train Station is 10 minutes from the site and a shuttle bus will drop you at the entrance gate.
At Birr traffic will join the N52 travelling northbound via Kilcormac and Blueball and onto the event site at Screggan, Tullamore. Traffic will be directed left at Father Brown Road through Clonminham and onto the N80 travelling towards Mountmellick. At Derryclooney Bridge, Mountmellick traffic will be directed left and onto the R through Rosenallis and Clonaslee.
At Killurin Cross traffic will be directed left towards the event site at Screggan, Tullamore and parking beside the event site. Traffic will then turn left to the Heath and left again at the Wheel Inn pub sign-postedPortarlington. Traffic will proceed to Kennells Cross and be turned left and travel towards Mountmellick town. All traffic will be directed through Mountmellick town and onto Tullamore viaKilleigh.
Traffic will then proceed to parking beside the event grounds. In Borrisokane traffic will take the N62 Signposted Portumna and after 5km traffic will turn right onto the R to Cloghan. In Cloghan traffic will turn onto the R before being directed to parking beside the event grounds.
The modern, industrial plough, dragged by a horsepower tractor, can carve eight to 12 furrows at a time. Cherry, a tall loping man with an air of contented chaos about him, farms 1, hectares of chalky boulder clay in Hertfordshire with his brother, Paul. For years, the pair ploughed until they began to notice that their soil was not just declining in quality, but vanishing. Ploughing leaves the soil bare, exposing it to rain and wind.
The soil remains undisturbed, its inhabitants and ecosystem protected. So convinced is Cherry of the no-till method that three years ago, he launched Groundswell , a two-day summer festival held on his farm, where hundreds of farmers learn about conservation agriculture.
Among Brazilian soil experts and English worm specialists, Cherry delivered an hour-long lecture, with slides, to a packed barn on the success story of no-tilling his own farm. Nor is no-till perfect. As the plough no longer buries the weeds, no-till farmers still have to spray pesticides.
To be both is the holy grail, as one ecologically minded farmer put it to me. But to the conservationists, spraying glyphosate is a minor interference compared with the aggressive upheaval caused by ploughing. A fter nearly four hours of competition, the amber light started to flash.
At 2pm, the lights turned red. Boyles looked shattered, but pleased. On the other side, Chappell was sunk in gloom. Health and safety instructions were given about how the competitors should drive in convoy to minimise the risk of a tractor-spectator collision. Ken Chappell sat at the back and looked weary. He had little time for bureaucracy. It was bad for morale: if you had done badly the first day, there was little hope of clawing your way back on the second.
Politics, some muttered, comparing the judging process to Eurovision. He was one behind Hailey Gruber, who was darting around the room with delight, still years off being able to legally drink to celebrate. Chappell, meanwhile, was languishing in 18th place in the reversible. He was disappointed. D ay two, grassland ploughing, and the rain started to teem down in the morning and never stopped.
The crowds descended, swaddled in plastic. Chappell, vivid in a red, Kverneland-sponsored boiler suit, was sitting in his tractor looking wrecked. An upset stomach, little sleep. Ken and Anne looked anxious and damp. The lights turned green and the ploughmen set off. Even though there were hours to go, so much seemed to rest on those opening minutes, that first incision into the earth. After a few suspended moments, no one wanted to be the first to say it. Ken just kept standing there, staring into the drizzle.
He kept getting off and slowly limping around the plough, or stopping completely. There was no way he could finish in time. As the final minutes ticked by and Cochrane rounded off his faultless plot, Mick was still down the wrong end of the field with his tape measure out.
Ken and Anne were watching in silence. Finally, Mick finished, five minutes over, and collapsed back in his seat. Anne gave him some glucose tablets while a trio of medics came along to check he was all right, causing a low-level buzz along the field in the way suffering only can in sport. Boyles was still spannering away as the amber light flashed, and ploughed his last furrow with seconds to spare. All that build-up, and it was over. The crowds streamed back to their cars.
Chappell, finally, was off his tractor, cleaning his plough. What happened? A steward had told him to give up. The ploughmen started to drive their tractors off the field. Tracey was taking final pictures of his plot for posterity and chatting to admirers.
It just made it turn a little easier. W hat will happen to our land over the next generation or two will depend on what we do to it, and what we stop doing to it. There are bleak predictions: four years ago, Sheffield University researchers suggested that given the state of their soil, British farms only have harvests left. But conservationists detect a moment of opportunity. As farmers face the disappearance of EU subsidies, no-till campaigner Cherry believes they are desperately looking to cut costs.
No-till farming uses less diesel, less fertiliser. Every year, he said, more farmers were defecting to his side. When he announced his agriculture bill in September, Gove set out how farming, post-Brexit, would in theory become a paid-for public good. The farmers who provide the greatest environmental benefit, including improved soil health, would receive the largest financial reward. Ploughing, in this vision, would no longer make a lot of sense.
They were tired of the current system, of the sense that other farmers in other countries were getting more out of the EU than they were. Ken stayed at the hotel to keep his son company, but the rest of the Chappells, Boyles and his wife were all there, dressed up and sitting at trestle tables in a barn, eating a three-course dinner as they waited to find out who had won.
Ploughmen trooped outside to smoke impatiently. Finally, general secretary McHugh took to the stage in a sparkling dress and invited the ploughmen up to sit behind her in neat rows — naturally — each one cheered as they took their place. After many dramatic pauses, McHugh announced the winners and surprised no one at all: in the reversible, Thomas Cochrane of Northern Ireland, and in the conventional, the inevitable Eamonn Tracey.
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