The weather wasn't terribly good this year but at least it was only a bit damp, unlike last year when there were hailstorms.

This year's show felt like it had been scaled down a bit - there seemed to be less variety of events in the main arena. There wasn't a dedicated food tent but most of the same food vendors were there, just not concentrated in one area.

We were there for the Hamster show but we had some free time to walk around the site and see some of the events.

There were a lot of horse-related events in the main arena. This one involved riders having to pick up litter using spiked sticks. You can tell it was cold from the steam coming out of the horse's nostrils.

Ferret Racing. This was the winning ferret at the 2 o'clock race. Luckily it was also the one we bet on.

I was watching one of the falconry events and the bird landed on one of the loudspeakers near where I was standing.

All of these photos were taken using an old telephoto zoom lens on my Nikon D40. The new cameras can't focus through the old lens but it still works if I'm prepared to focus manually. I thought it wouldn't be a problem but it turned out to be surprisingly difficult to focus accurately. My old manual focus cameras had features such as the split screen rangefinder and fresnel screen. These made it very easy to see when something was in focus. The modern autofocus cameras have a plain screen which isn't as useful. The 'electronic rangefinder' has a dot which appears when focus is achieved but it isn't as easy to use as the old fashioned manual focus system.

I should probably start looking out for a newer lens but I shouldn't complain really. At least the old Nikon lenses still work on the newer cameras, even if they don't have 100% functionality. It's better than nothing.