THE phrase “it’s the only game in town” has become attached to the Eleven Arches’ Kynren summer shows at Bishop Auckland because the area’s future relies on the £31m project and the other multi-million-pound attractions in the pipeline.

With a paying audience of around 100,000 pouring into the area this year, the tableau of English pageantry being staged on 7.5 acres of the former Flatts Farm site could re-write County Durham’s history in terms of millions generated on the field of battle and for commercially challenged businesses nearby.

“It’s not just Bishop Auckland that will hope to benefit, it’s actually the entire county and the region," says CEO Anne-Isabelle Daulon. "We are not a standalone visitor attraction, we have multiple ways to engage with visitors. The magic of the project is that... wherever people stay they will be spending money here and contributing to the growth of the region. Once you’ve made people travel 500 miles, chances are they’re not going to turn around and leave the minute the show is over.”

Having been widely touted as one of the UK’s top tourist attractions, Eleven Arches is trying to leave little to chance. Ticket-buyers are being advised to turn up for shows – starting at 9.30pm, 9pm or 8.30pm – at least an hour early “and longer if you need to make time for parking your car”.

Could this indicate there is concern that thousands of cars and coaches may get snarled up in the busy streets of Bishop Auckland or rural Weardale seeking the A689 entrance to Eleven Arches?

Daulon is confident that show number one on Saturday, July 2, isn’t going to descend into gridlock. “It’s not going to happen. We have adequate parking and visitor facilities and everything is in place to welcome them because it is a site that has been built for purpose which makes the main difference. You wouldn’t start questioning whether you can do this at Beamish. That’s simply because Beamish can accommodate that many visitors,” she says.

Of course, Beamish-goers don’t tend to turn up in bulk at a set time. Daulon talks about thousands of parking spaces being available “on-site and off-site, all within walking distance”.

Bishop’s North Bondgate car park is being linked to Eleven Arches traffic which will put a mix of pedestrians and road traffic on the same A689 route to the site. When this happens at football matches, traffic is often halted until those on foot are no longer in danger – a particular challenge if people are on the road at 11pm after performances.

Advice is being sought from the police and Durham County Council’s Highways Department to ensure that trips to the showground run as smoothly as possible and 80 on-site spaces will be available for blue badge users.

“You seem to be assuming that there is no plan, but we’ve got monthly meetings with advisory groups," says Daulon. "That’s part of having a licence and we have a traffic and management plan looking at signage from the A1 to the town and then inside the town to ensure the flow of visitors is accounted for. It is the same for Durham’s Lumiere or Wimbledon or the V Festival.

“In addition to Jonathan Ruffer we have other donors and collectively an investment of £31m. Trust me it’s not a question of the first show being successful, it’s the first and the second and all 14 of the first season. And because the project has multiple legs we want to put on a season year after year and then, in 13 years, we can have a conversation that this was the best thing to happen to County Durham.”

Putting on 14 shows is also mainly in the hands of 1,000 volunteers, 600 performing the 2,000 years of history and others guiding in traffic and providing the front of house services.

Daulon says: “Our 1,000 volunteers are being professionally trained and I can assure you if I hadn’t told you they were volunteers you wouldn’t know.”

She points to the Puy du Fol shows in France where 3,650 volunteers welcome 13,000 visitors 28 nights a year. “There will be no room for error, we know that, and the expectations of our visitors are going to be high,” she says, comparing the effort to that of the 2012 London Olympic volunteers.

“When you are going to this kind of open-air venue it’s not like going to the cinema and getting in in seconds, but we are making people aware of this on our website,” Daulon adds.

From Roman re-enactment to medieval jousts and Britain’s many wartime moments, the risks to Tableau cast appears high.

“We can never have a zero-risk, but are taking every step we can. We have been trained and advised and are working with the best. These people have used swords and entertained two million visitors every year between April and September, so there have been a lot of actors using swords. But everybody in the show will be a volunteer. I am a volunteer in the night show,” she says.

Doesn’t the chief executive of Eleven Arches have a vested interest because her salary is at sake?

“My involvement is that I am paid from Monday to Friday and I end up working from Monday to Sunday because I am a volunteer. Yes, there is a vested interest but we all own the show and everyone has an interest in making it happen at the top of its game. What is extraordinary is that everyone is Eleven Arches,” she says.

Daulon’s own training includes that of a cast member and she is learning a number of roles, but can’t say yet who’ll she will be playing on the night.

The technical side of the shows starts in April and the dress rehearsals begin in May and June.

And does the CEO know how much money is needed to guarantee that Eleven Arches can operate year on year?

“I do, but I don’t think that this is the purpose of this conversation,” Daulon says.

n Early Bird tickets for Kynren, which runs until September 17, are available until the end of January. Bronze level tickets are currently £22.50 adults, £17.10 child up to Diamond, £49.50 and £36.90

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