GWENT Young Farmer's Club members Chloe Neal, Meghan Powell and Abigail Walker – a pupil at Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls – represented the region in the national junior reading competition.

Run by the National Federation of Young Farmers' Clubs, the competition was held at Staffordshire County Showground last Saturday (4th July) and was made up of other successful county level teams from across Britain.

The Gwent team had previously competed and achieved first place successes at both county YFC level and then at the all-Wales final, held annually in Builth Wells back in March.

Last Saturday, the girls had to read unseen passages from The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. The standard of reading was excellent and after putting their training and skills into practice, they were rewarded with fifth place in the competition, narrowly missing out on third place by just one and a half points.

The girls have shown great commitment and focus to training and, although are now over the top age limit to compete in this competition again, their successes stand them in good stead to compete in further public speaking competitions in the future.