THE YEAR'S biggest weekend of wrestling starts tomorrow with the All Weights World Championship at Holme Show, Newcastleton, while on Sunday Grasmere will be the magnet for wrestlers and supporters.

On Monday Silloth Carnival's wrestling includes the

Boys Under-15 Championship, writes Roger Robson.

A party of seven Bretons will be in Cumbria for the occasion, but a large group of Icelanders will not attend as they well remember the plague of scrapie, which they imported with sheep intended to replace all those eaten by the American garrison during the war.

Their only cattle were put in quarantine not far from the Arctic Circle.

To such people Cumbria 2001 is a no-go area.

Other people though are queuing up.

Roy Lomas, from Madrid but with Dalston connections, makes an annual trek and this year is working on a book about the first 150 years of Grasmere Sports.

He is seeking help on all aspects of Grasmere's history, so if your family has old photographs, programmes, life histories or anecdotes that relate to a prolific champion look for the small exhibition he is staging at the show where you can contact him.

Another hopeful author is Marcus Towers from Surrey whose route to Grasmere has been via India, Mongolia, Australia and the British Library researching wrestling every step of the way.

He would like to meet anyone who would be able to look back 50 or 60 years to give him a picture of wrestling as it was then.

He has found a strong link between herders and wrestlers in his travels and will find that also holds true for Cumberland and Westmorland.

I met Joanna Pinnock under a pew in Ely Cathedral.

She was looking for carvings of cats and I was looking for wrestlers on the misericords in the choir stalls.

She was intrigued by the wrestling connection and has come up from Cambridge to explore the possibility of a special programme for radio Four.

Another traveller from the deep south is Donald Black whose web page pops up if you search for Cumberland and Westmorland Wrestling.

Last year he took 300 photographs to put on the net.

Dates

Tomorrow (Saturday): 12 noon, At Holm Day, Newcastleton U13/U15/U18/12.5st/AW Champion-ship.

Sunday: 11am, Grasmere Sports U12/U15/U18 Championship/11st Championship/12st/13st/14st/AW.

Monday: 11am, Silloth Carnival Y12/U15 Championship/U18/11st/ 13st/AW.