CLEANING up the prizes will lead to the cleaning of lots of cups for a couple who swept the board of major trophies at Langdon Beck show on Saturday.

As well as the Brian Bainbridge Cup for supreme champion, Andrew and June Harrison, of Ettersgill in Upper Teesdale, lifted the J M Hazard Cup for local champion sheep, the Middleton-in-Teesdale Auction Mart Cup for local female champion, the Penrith Farmers and Kidds Cup for open champion, the Adrian Bell Livestock Scanning Cup for champion female, the R I Scott & Sons Cup for local gimmer lamb and the Mark Armitage Memorial Cup for open ewe. Not content with livestock prizes, they also took home the Trevor Hutchinson shield for best hay.

Mr Harrison told the D&S Times that his champion Swaledale ewe was sired by a Roly Fawcett tup out of a ewe by a homebred tup, which later sold for £24,000, a record-breaking price for Middleton mart.

"She was shown at Langdon Beck as a gimmer lamb in 2000, where she won all her classes," said Mr Harrison, whose gimmer shearling was reserve champion that year, the last time the show was held.

The couple also tasted success this year with two gimmer lambs, both of which were sired by home bred tups.

"It was a good show, with some quality stock, and it was nice to see friends from Cumbria getting back on their feet again," said Mr Harrison, who as well as lifting most of the silverware received a £150 prize put up by landowner Lord Barnard.

The show attracted entries from Cumbria and West Yorkshire as well as a strong local contingent.

"This show is very much a demonstration that hill farming is alive and kicking and here to stay," said Coun Richard Betton, who farms in the upper dale.

Coun Betton, who helped fill in the reams of paperwork for Defra to enable the show to go ahead, added, "This area was virtually surrounded by foot-and-mouth last year. We realised it was important to put on a show this year. If we had waited any longer it would have been difficult to re-start it."

In its heyday, the show attracted thousands of visitors before it disappeared from the agriculture calendar around 1906. It was reinstated in 2000 only to be cancelled last year owing to foot-and-mouth.