AT this time of the year, featured in your what’s on pages, adverts and in many other local publications, is the usual round of Country Shows, Steam Fairs, Farm Events and the like right across the region.

My wife and I, now retired, would love to attend so many of these brilliant events but time and time again we look down the advert and read the entrance fee figure which on pension alone makes such days out now quite untenable.

The average County Show or Fair will now be at least ten pounds – with perhaps a pound pensioner’s concession – welcome, but nowhere enough to be viable now for us. Such a shame.

Don’t the organisers of these events realise just how they are pricing themselves off the field, literally?

Look at the example of the Royal Show at Stoneleigh, which we went to every year for say twelve years on the trot – now defunct.

Likewise we attended The Romsey Show and The Great Dorset Steam Fair most years, both now quite out of our reach pricewise.

I see the New Forest Show is due shortly, but with regret we will not be able to go and pay such a ridiculous entry fee, even with pensioner concessions. Don’t the organisers realise just what proportion of a weekly pension is to equate with twenty pounds for the two of us?

Obviously not. Perhaps publicity may make them all think about this very sad trend.

Martin H Pennington, Collingbourne Lane, Burbage