LAST YEAR provided the RH and AS with one of the its biggest headaches in its history.

That is, just how to cap the 2009 Royal Highland Show’s record performance in a year which marks the historic 50th jubilee of it arriving at its now spiritual home of Ingliston, just outside Edinburgh.

The ‘big problem’ is that last year it recorded the largest attendance in the show’s 170-year history. There were 176,522 paying customers through the turnstiles during the four-day show to create that record. But, can the show match that popularity this year?

First off, you can say that it will not be for a lack of trying.

As a farming show, it can only benefit from the demise of what was once the foremost show in the UK – known simply as The Royal – and if there was once a perceived inferiority complex for what used to be the ‘lesser Royals, in Belfast, Edinburgh and Builth Wells, then that is no more. ‘Our’ Highland now vies with the Royal Welsh to be the foremost agricultural event in the UK.

One thing that is for sure, is that the RH and AS’s 50 years at Ingliston have not been idly spent. From what was once a site no more favourable than those visited on the event’s round robin of Scotland – Inverness, Dumfries, Aberdeen and Perth, to name but some – Ingliston has achieved a sense of purpose and now provides a fitting, permanent shop window for all that is best in Scottish agriculture.

See some of The SF’s pictures from the first Ingliston event in 1960 on our carousel, above.