Comitatus at Wallington

[John Conyard]

Good morning,

I don't really want James' posts to slant this thread towards a discussion on event planning. We can start a separate thread for that. But I will say that I am sure every client has a target in terms of visitor numbers and for some venues visitor numbers are vital. It is heavily dependent on weather, but insurance can be taken out to help protect large events from heavy losses. At Wallington we hoped for 4,000 and got 9,000 visitors. It was brilliant.

We were lucky at Wallington that everything just came together to make an exceptional event. Often the first event of the year can be a "rusty". Members may sit up too late over their wine, horses need a bit of time to get in the groove etc. But everybody in their own way had prepared well for the event. Lots of new kit was looking good. The new horses were well prepared and I have never ridden such well groomed mounts at an event. A few javelin shafts had dried out over the winter and broke over the weekend but we were expecting such breakages and had spares. The advertising really worked well, the weather was perfect, the venue excellent and the arena just the right size. We walked through each show and had prepared all sorts of alternative plans if various bits of kit and equipment had broken. I could have made a new ballista from the spare parts I was carrying. We just about kept to timings and everything ran like clockwork.

It was just a really exceptional weekend. I do not think Comitatus has ever entertained 9,000 people over a weekend before. It was very special. Enough said!