The Greatest Dog Show on Earth

You might have seen on the news over the last couple of days, about the Gromit madness that's hit Bristol city.

 

As well as the 10 week Gromit hunting trail, the Gromit Unleashed organisers decided to stage an exhibition of all 80 Gromits housed in the Royal West of England Academy.
But I don't really think they anticpated just how many thousands of people wanted to see our nation's favourite pooch!

 

 

First the exhibition was moved to a bigger location, then they had to extend the opening hours and add on an extra day, and even then the queue sometimes reached 6 hours waiting time. At one point BBC news reckoned there was 3000 people waiting to see all the woofies.

 

 

I didn't think we'd be free to visit the exhibition but we realised we could probably fit it in on Sunday morning. I knew we'd have to get there early if we stood any chance of visiting the exhibition so we set off from home at 7.45am armed with wild boar and apple sausage sandwiches, a bottle of water and two cups of tea.

 

By 8.30am we were in the queue which thankfully hadn't built up too much. I probably should add that the show didn't even open til 11am but it was only open for 6 hours on Sunday so if the queue ended up being 6 hours long - well, you do the maths!

 

There was a really cheery atmosphere in the crowd with most people sat on the floor reading or chatting. An ice cream van turned up about 9am which prompted lots of children wanting a Mr Whippy for breakfast and at 10.20am, the doors opened and a very nice man with a megaphone informed the crowd that they would be opening 30 minutes early (with donations instead of an entry fee to circumvent the Sunday trading laws).
Needless to say the very nice man received a huge cheer and a round of applause!

 

And by 11.40am, we were in!

It was all laid out like a proper dog show with categories such as 'Bristol Dogs', 'Working Dogs', 'Toy Dogs' and of course, a 'Best in Show'.

I took over 100 pictures and I've tried to narrow it down to the best ones, but even so, because a lot of the Gromits were stood in a line, the pictures do look a little same-y - sorry!

 

 

 

 

 

And Andrew got me to stand here as apparently this is what I am - a 'Rare Breed' - although I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or an insult!

 

We did manage to finally see the one Gromit we were missing - Classic Gromit - plus the Gromit Unleashed organisers had sneakily added an extra yet-to-be-named 81st Gromit to the collection. We got that one as well - but those two Gromits will have to wait til another blog post!