Call for cheaper pitch-prices from Gypsies and Travellers at Royal Welsh Show

By MIKE DOHERTY

Above: the Price brothers' bow top wagon on the way to the Royal Welsh Show

GYPSIES and Travellers are calling for cheaper pitch prices at the Royal Welsh Show Traveller transit site after single touring caravans and old age pensioners were charged £200 – a 400% increase in three years.

The Royal Welsh Agricultural Show in Powys is a national institution in Wales, and first came to its current home in Builth Wells in 1963. The three day agricultural show and funfair attracts over a quarter of a million people, including Gypsies and Travellers from all over the country, with many staying on Ysgiog Field, a temporary stopping place three miles from the showground, that opens a week before the show itself.

Travellers’ Times met up with Sam and Jim Price, Romany Gypsies from Cardiff, as they made the two week journey to the Ysgiog Field by horse drawn wagons. They travel to the show every year, but this year decided to take the time to make the journey in the tradition Gypsy/Traveller way. It’s the day the site opens but they are still three or four days away and are enjoying the slow pace of travel. The brothers reckon that they get far less trouble from locals and the police travelling with their horses and two wagons. Indeed, whilst we talk at an overnight stopping place in a riverside field next to a pub, a settled woman dressed in riding gear parks her car, introduces herself and asks if she can stroke the horses. Sam is standing by his Bow Top Wagon enjoying a pint of lager from the pub and just over a low picket fence; customers in the beer garden chat and enjoy their drinks too. “You just wouldn’t get this in vans and trailers,” says Sam Price.  

The brothers are not happy to hear that the pitch price has increased. “It should be cheaper or even free if you are horse-drawn,” says Sam. “The cost is too high for what it is.”

Travellers have been staying at Ysgiog Field for over thirty years,with the farmer who owned the field paid by the families camping there. In 2010, the site became an authorised temporary encampment after Powys Council successfully applied for planning permission for Ysgiog Field, who now rent the field from the owner for £10,000 for the two weeks that it is open. Water bowsers, lighting, road tracking and portaloos were provided for the families, alongside an on-site security team and a fee of around £20-£50 was charged per family.

This year, with Ysgiog Field  under the control of a new council manager, the arriving Travellers were shocked to be told that the fee had been increased to £200 per pitch, although that would be reduced by £15 per day for those arriving after the field opened.

A spokesperson from Powys County Council says that the fees were “formally discussed” with Dyfed Powys Police and “members of the community”, and that the charge “reflected a sum which was considered to be fair to all.” The spokesperson adds that since the show is

However, the news of the price increase did not seem to have filtered through to those arriving.  The Gypsies and Travellers on the site when Travellers' Times visited on the day it opened said that they had not known about the price hike, but had paid the new fee to get on because they had no choice.

Andy Lee and his wife Annie have been travelling to the Royal Welsh Show from Liverpool since Andy was “nine years old.” Now in his seventies, Mr Lee and his wife were the first to pull on to the Ysgiog Field this year. Sitting outside his small touring caravan by the entrance watching the other trailers pulling on, Mr Lee – who says his son-in-law is the boxer Tyson Fury – says that he was not happy with the increase.

“It should be less for pensioners,” he says. “We are both in our seventies and we are paying the same as for a pitch with two vans and trailers on it and there are only two of us with our tiny trailer. We can afford it. But we will have less to spend in the fair. It does seem too much. We stayed at commercial campsites on the way here and for the same price we got mains water, electric hook-up, a toilet block and showers.”

Mr Lee, who has been coming to the Royal Welsh Show “since he was nine years old,” is speaking with experience. Indeed, the main reason why Powys Council authorised the previously unofficial stopping place at Ysgiog Field was to control unauthorised encampments in and around Builth Wells for the duration of the show. “You know what will happen if the price does go up too much,” adds Mr Lee, with a knowing look. “The boys will pull into another field and it won’t cost them anything. You know the boys will do what they need to do if they have to.”