Royal Highland Show
If you’ve got a bit of Scottish ancestry and you’re heading to Scotland next month, Road Trips Foodies, you might want to put the Royal Highland Show on your schedule.
Held at the Highland Showgrounds in Edinburgh, Scotland, from June 19 through 22, 2014, the show is a “celebration of Scottish farming, food and rural life”. More than 100 Scottish food and drink exhibitors will attend alongside gourmet suppliers from across the United Kingdom.
Although the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland was established in 1784, it wasn’t until December 1822 that it held its first show at Queensberry House in Edinburgh’s Canongate when according to The Scotsman newspaper “…between sixty and seventy five cattle were exhibited.” There were also eight New Leicester sheep and “two beautiful pigs.”
Following the inaugural event, the show became a fixture in Edinburgh and Glasgow before moving to Perth in 1829, thereby beginning the tradition of itinerant shows that was to last 130 years before the first “Highland” was held on the permanent site at Ingliston in 1960. The 2014 show is the 174th to be staged.
(Photo courtesy of Royal Highland Show)
