Thousands Travel To Offaly For National Ploughing Championships

Thousands of people – including many from Clare – are making their way to County Offaly this morning as the 2018 National Ploughing Championships begin.

For the third year running, the biggest event in the Irish farming calendar is taking place just outside Tullamore.

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The final touches are being put in place here at the site of the 2018 National Ploughing Championships in Screggan, just outside Tullamore in Co. Offaly.

Last year saw 291,000 people attend over the three days and organisers this year are hopeful that figure will exceed 300,000 for the first time.

It’s a varied programme of events with threshing, vintage shows, fashion and food all on offer as well as the ploughing itself.

All routes are busy coming into Tullamore this morning – heavy delays can be expected on the R357 approaching Blue Ball, the R420 from Clara and the N80 on the Portlaoise side of the town.

That’s expected to have died down by 10 o’clock this morning but all those routes will be extremely busy once again as the home exodus begins later.

We’ll have live updates from the National Ploughing Championships all week to give a flavour of what’s happening here.