Palace poser

7:01am Friday 1st August 2008

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It is good to hear that the organisers of the CLA Game Fair are to hold talks with police and council leaders later this year to try to ensure there is no repeat of the traffic chaos that affected many roads around Oxford on the opening day of this year's event.

The CLA Game Fair is always a massive show, enjoyed by tens of thousands, and this year's event was always set to be a record-breaker, following the cancellation of last year's event in Yorkshire due to flooding and the celebration of the Game Fair's 50th anniversary.

So some delays were inevitable, but in addition to the volume of traffic, there was a road accident on Friday morning, which the organisers believe was responsible for the chaos that ensued.

The second and third days of the event passed without any of the major problems experienced on the opening day, which suggests that it is perfectly possible to get tens of thousands people in and out of Blenheim Palace without bringing part of the county to a standstill.

The Game Fair is not due to return to Blenheim until 2012, so there is some time to assess exactly what went wrong, but no one should hold their breath.

Given the fact that the roads infrastructure around Oxford struggles to cope with the existing level of traffic at the best of times, we are not hopeful of an instant fix.