I'm beginning to feel that the City of Ripon has a hidden dark side. We have attended a number of events in the Market Square and been well pleased at all of them. Last November we attended an event on the racecourse and it was a complete washout. Well it has just happened again. We just finished setting up the helter skelter at a funday on the course when it started to rain, within 15 minutes it was torrential and continued for most of the day. We didn't actually begin operating the attraction and decided to pull it back down.

After 2 hours in in a monsoon with 25 m.p.h. winds we finally had it ready for the road. Renny and I were like a pair of drowned rats by this time but looking forward to going home. We moved the helter skelter to the roadside using a 4 wheel drive vehicle with little trouble.

When it came to moving the 6 wheel lorry we were using to tow the helter skelter we hit a snag, over the day it had sunk into the ground and wouldn't move in any direction, we tried skid mats, towing it with the jeep, digging it out all to no avail. Eventually we managed to contact a council depot to send a tractor, but that wouldn't reach us for nearly 2 hours. When it did arrive it only just managed to pull us out, but in doing so left around 500 feet of ruts in the ground and half a dozen holes big enough to bury someone in. We spent another hour flattening ruts but to put the ground back in satisfactory order we will probably need to make another visit on Monday with a vibrating roller.

I guess in future we might just avoid this particular racecourse!