It's simply been the hottest Royal Welsh Show I can ever remember! Standing up to two hours at a time in a show ring can really take its toll on your energy.

Main show ring at the Royal Welsh Show

It's an early start for all of us, most of us starting out at 6am or even before and some days we recorded late into the night.

It's all been worth it, though, with some really lovely stories and fantastic contributors making the Royal Welsh Show what it is.

Rhys talks to a handler

I got the chance to work alongside the young handlers today: utterly amazing. They didn't complain once as the heat of the midday sun beat down relentlessly on the field of competitors.

I showed a Balwen lamb in the sheep ring last year and it's not as easy as it looks, yet these young handlers worked their sheep like pros. Hats off boys and girls, I was mightily impressed. Another fantastic day spent with talented people and stunning animals!

Why would you want to be anywhere else?

I am having an amazing time at the Royal Welsh Show show this year. I have to give a massive shout out to the Davies family from Whitland for allowing me to help prepare their champion dairy cows for competition; what an honour!

Rhys and the crew

I've also been having a great time with the James family from just outside Builth Wells as they also saw red cards aplenty with their Blue faced Leicester ewes:

Members of the James family with their champion sheep

I was really moved watching the Spitfire take to the air over the show ground. There is just something about the sound of the aircraft as it ripped overhead that seemed to leave the crowd spellbound and feel really privileged to have witnessed the display.

Just how much longer will we be able to witness a sight like that in our skies? Today is going to be another big day at the show but I cannot wait!

Hundreds of young birds have already been rescued after being blown inland on their migratory flights.

Skomer warden for the Wildlife Trust, Chris Taylor, said: "They are hardy little birds, really well designed for long distance flying.

"The young ones are probably the majority of birds that ended up on Newgale beach. Sadly this big storm, the biggest winds we've had on the island since March time, has hit them. It's really bad timing really.

BBC Wales News full story.

Leatherback turtle by Mike Daines

Weighing up to a tonne and measuring almost three metres in length, these incredible creatures are unlike any other reptile in that they can maintain their own body heat up to18 degrees centigrade warmer than even the chilliest of British summer seas.

While leatherback turtle populations face extinction in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, many nesting populations in the Atlantic appear to be increasing.

MCS Biodiversity Programme Manager, Dr Peter Richardson, said it's not clear why the Atlantic Ocean has become the last stronghold for the leatherback turtle: "While conservation action at important nesting beaches is likely to be playing a part, it may also be due to the increasing availability of their jellyfish prey, combined with collapses in the populations of predatory fish such as tuna and sharks."

August is the peak time to see leatherback turtles in UK waters, as they arrive from their nesting grounds in the Caribbean to refuel on our abundant seasonal jellyfish blooms.

So far this year 12 sightings have been reported from south west Wales and England, seven of which have been seen in the last fortnight. "The leatherback is the largest of all marine turtle species and at a distance could be mistaken for a floating log, but if you approach them slowly and carefully, once you see their large reptilian head, massive flippers and ridged leathery shell you can't mistake them for anything else," said Dr Richardson.

MCS has been encouraging the reporting of marine turtles in UK waters since 2001, and leatherbacks make up 75 per cent of those sightings already recorded. To help identify turtles in UK waters, spotters can download The UK Turtle Code, created by MCS with support from Natural England and Scottish Natural Heritage. The code describes the different species and how to identify them and who to report them to.

UK and Ireland turtle encounters can also be reported to MCS online at www.mcsuk.org.

Great tit with avian pox. Photo: Liz Cutting

Avian pox has been recorded in bird species such as house sparrows and wood pigeons for a number of years, but its recent emergence in great tits is causing real concern as the birds develop more severe symptoms of the disease.

Scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the University of Oxford recorded the first occurrence of the disease in Oxford last year. Prior to this, affected birds had most often been sighted in Surrey, Kent and Sussex. The researchers are now calling on the public to report sightings of garden birds with symptoms of avian pox to the RSPB Wildlife Enquiries Unit to help the research team track the spread of the disease.

Avian poxvirus causes the disease avian pox which leads to warty, tumour-like growths on different parts of a bird's body, particularly on the head around the eyes and beak. The disease can be relatively mild in some species, but great tits have been shown to suffer severe symptoms which can prevent them from feeding and may increase their susceptibility to predation.

Wildlife vet Dr Becki Lawson from ZSL said: "We now believe avian pox has spread as far north as Staffordshire. Public reports of sick birds are essential in helping us to track the disease and determine the wider impact it is having on our garden birds."

The virus is spread between birds by biting insects that carry the virus, direct contact with other birds and, indirect contact possibly through contaminated bird feeders. Avian poxvirus is not known to be infectious to humans or other mammals.

Professor Ben Sheldon of the Edward Grey Institute at the University of Oxford said: "We have been studying great tits at Wytham Woods near Oxford since 1947 - the longest running study of its kind in the world - so we were very concerned when we first detected this disease in 2010. We're using our detailed observations to try to understand how this new form of pox affects survival and reproductive success."

Avian poxvirus was first recorded in great tits in Scandinavia in the 1970s and has recently been seen in Central Europe. Funded by NERC, the research team from ZSL and the University of Oxford are now undertaking molecular analysis of the virus to determine whether this new strain in Great Britain is the same as that seen on the continent.

Winners in the ring

Some of them are very male, perhaps disposed to friskiness by the amount of pheromones that must be permeating the air. (Not at all similar to the beer tent, then.)

Stallion

Even the young 'uns get in on the act, with this foal causing his handler some grief:

Frisky foal

The sheer number and variety of animals in the ring is astonishing, and it's a spectacular way in which to effectively close the show. It's the culmination of four days for me of exhausting but highly entertaining work, talking to some fascinating people and seeing some crazy sights.

There's a competition in which statuesque young men hack angles out of poles with an axe, into which they insert a specially-designed plank. They then stand on that plank for the next rung and work their way up. That is almost as puzzlingly entertaining as the sheep shearing.

In the main ring finale, this cow is modelling a great look:

Champion cow with rain protection

That my brain and legs are now shutting down in protest I shall take as a good sign. Sent as a fish out of water, I've grown vestigial lungs. It's been highly educational and largely a very enjoyable week. Of course there are some troubling elements, but those are for others to debate.

Around me BBC staff are dismantling the 'photograph your child as Doctor Who' room, so it's time to sign off. I feel like a less-qualified Alistair Cooke with Letter From Builth Wells. So noswydd da, good evening.

I take a walk down to the enormous (must think of a few new adjectives for this place) retail area, with craft and food stalls huddled together with charities, clothing emporia and all manner of things you never knew you needed, or even knew existed.

There are some wonderful example of greengrocers' grammar and spelling, with this one catching my eye especially:

Even God gets in on the action, with a large tent exclaiming 'Dying for Jesus' and featuring some sort of puppet show. It's busy, and it's not even raining.

I stop by the Greyhound Rescue Wales stand where a little cross-breed takes a liking to my beard, while at the Dogs Trust they appear to have found the cutest dog available to draw the donations.

Various craftsmen and women shine, whittle, fletch, chisel and whet their wares next to people coating hot dogs in sauce or strawberries in chocolate. And here I am, full of sandwich and already having my full complement of novelty shoehorns. Shame.

Walking around between the stands and marquees I see a disparity between the people at either end of the site. I get the impression that some of the crowd here must simply be here for some retail therapy, while others at the top end of the site may never venture beyond the show rings. Each to their own, and it's part of what the last four days has shown me: the Royal Welsh Show is as disparate as its 226,407-strong audience.

Derek Brockway has just shown me his radar. It's like someone's sneezed all over Wales. My drive back this evening over the Brecon Beacons should be fun.

Staring competition with a sheep

I decide to see what's happening at the sheep ring as they're meant to be crowning the top specimens of their classes and breeds, then the 'champion of champions'. It's really difficult for anyone not a bona fide sheep-fancier to tell what's what, let alone for me, who normally sees muddy brown sheep, covered in barbed wire and faeces on some windswept upland.

So forgive my lack of clarity; the elderly couple next to me "love sheep" but they can't help me out either. We chat instead about the "lovely coloured legs" of the stonking beast next to us, a class winner:

A class-winning sheep

Compared to the comparatively well-behaved horses (who only kicked a few people a few times), the sheep are a bit chaotic. The handlers are required to do a bit of ovine wrangling:

Wrestling a ram

Whipping out my macro long lens, I take this shot of a sheep's beady eye:

Sheep's eye

I'm really looking forward to the sheepdog trials starting in 30 minutes in the main ring. One Man And His Dog Redux, but without Phil Drabble.

Gundogs are divided into retrievers, setters, pointers and spaniels. Each group has its own specialism, but all of them can do the retrieving. The joke goes, of course, that they must be stupid, bringing back something their owner throws away, but these are some of the very cleverest dog breeds around.

Their capacity to understand and follow instructions, over-riding their instinctive behaviour until given permission to go, is what enables them to be used for the game hunting or other sports that their owners use them for.

Would that I were able to control my two as well as Elfyn, whose command of his spaniels and one Labrador is amazing. Even his new young dog, which has only been with him for a fortnight, behaves himself (just about). Patience, repetition and uniform training techniques are essential to make the pack do exactly what he wants. But he needs to ensure that the dogs are never bored, as he explains:

I hope today's forecast rain doesn't materialise. There's a lot to be said for not walking around with claggy mud caking one's boots.

I was asked a couple of days back what happens at the Royal Welsh in the evenings. I've been retiring to the half-Fawlty Towers, half-League Of Gentlemen B&B early, so I've not had first-hand experience of the night-time entertainment, but walking through the carpark this morning I saw a pair of boots, a pair of jeans and some knickers in a pile, so that answers that question.

It has struck me, though, that in addition to the young farmers and their wild excesses, and in addition to the serious-faced old hand exhibitors, the number of 'normal' people here is immense. People with an interest rather than a livelihood in rural life have flocked here in numbers.

There's a real enthusiasm for the wide range of the displays here, from yesterday's Welsh cobs, to the flower displays and the vintage farm machinery.

I've very much enjoyed seeing Elfyn Thomas and his small pack of gundogs (five spaniels and a labrador) doing retrieval work on land and water, and I've 'enjoyed' the atonal efforts of a singing trio yesterday on the Young Farmers Club stand. Heaven Is A Place On Earth by Belinda Carlisle was a particular highlight.

Just a little way down the hill on the bandstand was The Regimental Band of the Royal Welsh Infantry blasting out a brass version of Angels by Robbie Williams. It takes all sorts, I suppose.

Horses at Liberty

One particular highlight for me has been the displays by Jean François Pignon, which he calls 'Horses At Liberty'. Imagine a man with the air of Michael Praed as Robin Hood in Robin Of Sherwood (a great 1980s series, ask your parents), riding bareback, controlling his white steeds with seemingly minimal effort to perform tricks. All accompanied by music that - like that old Robin Hood soundtrack - sounds like Clannad.

All a load of hippy guff of course, but entertaining nonetheless. Just as entertaining has been Meirion Owen and the Quack Pack - ducks being herded by a sheepdog. I may try to locate him later on and find out how his Royal Welsh has been.

I've got a 12 hour stretch in front of me today so I'm going to be finding things with which to fill my last day. Glancing through the programme, I see pole-climbing, the Interbreed Sheep Group Championship and the Wrought Ironwork Live Competition. I know nothing about any of those, so that's a good start. If there's something the Royal Welsh lacks, it's not variety.

Sheep shearing at the Royal Welsh Show 2011

Let me explain. The crowd has a good percentage of youngsters in it; there's a kind of 'young farmer' chic which is part preppy and part tweed. There are a lot of extremely risqué and totally un-ironic t-shirts proclaiming so-and-so's willingness to do x, y or even z.

Most of them are puns or jokes that would require some patient explanation on The Archers or Farming Today. Suffice to say, a Royal Welsh novice like me doesn't get them. A lot of the audience have pints of beer.

The six competitors in the sheep shearing heats have two gates behind them on the stage: one to receive a hairy sheep through, and a smaller one to hurl a bald sheep back again. When a sheep is delivered, it is grabbed and held while its wool is shaven in double quick time, until 10 are shorn. I see a winner shear all 10 sheep in six minutes and 40 seconds.

The men - for it is only men - are muscled, toned young specimens in tight vests and hair tending to be spiked with pomades or waxes. It's like watching a young Westlife I would imagine.

I can only presume that the sheep shearing winners are hailed as heroes and like all boybands worth their salt, investigate whether those t-shirts are fibs.

Wow because you don't know until you see them how much time and effort must go into these displays. Whether it's one of the crazy, pseudo-architectural sculptures of vividly-coloured flowers which burn my retinas, or the fantastic-looking vegetables, it's a sight to behold.

I am accosted upon entering by a lady keen for me to photograph her 'vertical garden'. This is an example of aesthetics meeting practicality: if you have trouble bending over, or your garden is tiny, her box system is pretty impressive:

Vertical garden

Next up is a lady manning a great-looking collection of acers. Now I'm not green-fingered but I am keen to find out why the acer in my back garden appears to be dying. Not dead, she says, possibly self-preservation from wind. You really do learn something new every day here. It may now be reprieved from its planned trip to the tip.

Acers

Here are some cool cacti and succulents:

Succulents

The displays of flowers designed to provide an arresting visual feast are amazing. Not to my taste, I have to admit, but hopefully this will give you an idea of the kind of thing these enthusiasts create:

Flower display

My favourite bit, by far, is the vegetables. I freely admit to being a gourmand, and there's something special about seeing perfect specimens of the finest foodstuffs, carefully arranged. Curvaceous cauliflowers, tumescent tomatoes and perfect parsnips - a wonderful opportunity to be alliteratively idiotic.

Gold medal-winning cauliflowers

Tomatoes on display

A rack of gold medal-winning parsnips

Check out our gallery more pictures from day three, including more plant displays a little later.

Such are the perils of country roads on the way to the show.

Things are surprisingly easy once I'm parked up: don the wellies, check I've got my camera, the sound recorder and my essential bottle of coke for the morning caffeine hit. I walk along a corrugated temporary road/path, taking care to avoid being splattered with liquid mud by any 4x4s and get my card marked at the entrance.

Then it's a series of dog-legs, past the goat, sheep and pig sheds, right past the enormous food hall, left at M&S and another right at the cattle ring to bring me to the BBC building opposite the enormous main show ring.

Here's a picture of the ring just to give you an indication of the scale of this place:

Royal Welsh Show main ring

There's an awful lot of walking to do on the site. A little like a music festival, it seems to take forever to get anywhere (however, no felt festival hats are to be seen; it's all about the bowler, the deerstalker and the flat cap here).

Sensible shoes are a must; given this week's forecast of sunshine and showers, I took the wellies option and they've seen me right so far. With Derek Brockway forecasting some heavy showers this afternoon, I shan't be changing into my flip flops just yet.

Today is meant to be the most popular of the four days, according to the BBC Mid Wales news producer Carl, all down to that fact it's Welsh Cobs day. Over 60,000 people will be pouring into the site, a lot of them to view the cob varieties which have been used as working horses for centuries.

I'll be taking some pictures of some of them, no doubt. I might also be taking a picture of the Duke of Kent who's guest of honour today. He might even be visiting the BBC hovel at some point too. We're expecting just the show president, but I'll polish my eyebrow ring in preparation just in case.

This goat was a handsome lady:

But this one's not giving his best side:

This mare and her foal were prancing merrily away from the main ring:

This pig was debating whether to eat my camera:

Down at the sheep sheds, this one was being led out for its moment of glory:

And lastly, this duo... A strange profile!

Visit our gallery pages for lots more photos of the Royal Welsh Show.

Unscrewing the top, I am immediately blasted by a glutinous, gelatinous rain of red, sweet gunk. All over my jacket, my trousers, my sweatshirt, his tablecloth and the aged, bowed pastoral print beside me. That my breakfast is also smattered with ketchup is something of a happy accident.

After cleaning myself up as best I can (knowing that today I shall become a magnet for wasps, sigh), I resolve to go and visit some animals that have a reputation for being almost as dirty as I am: pigs.

Keith Brown of Wales And Borders Pig Breeders Association stands by his stall, in which is a saddleback sow ("I don't think she has a name") and her piglets.

"She's not very old," he says, "and those [pointing to the sleeping piglets] are an accident. She was with other sows but her brother got out and got her." He doesn't think the piglets will have any medical complications when I ask - the dangers of very close interbreeding in dogs is common knowledge.

I ask him if it's true that pigs are as intelligent as some dogs and he enthuses about the local pig shows his organisation is involved in. Apparently they do obedience and even agility, "but a bit slower than the dogs do it," he says.

I grab the dictaphone and ask him about his Royal Welsh:

Now it's time to go outside and avoid those wasps.