Cheltenham Festival

Posted on 2014/03/15 08:42:13 (March 2014).

[Wednesday 12th March 2014]
It had been touch and go whether I'd make it to the Cheltenham Festival today or not, with Erika being ill, but having put in a full day looking after Erika yesterday, Chie said she was prepared to do the same in return today. As it turned out she didn't even have to - Erika actually seemed fine this morning, and Chie decided to drop her off at nursery a bit before midday.

Kyle had agreed to come along with me today, but he almost missed it too thanks to his train to Victoria being cancelled. The staff on the coach seemed surprisingly relaxed about their schedule though, they had already arrived about 10 minutes late, and didn't seem to mind waiting another few minutes for Kyle - so he just made it.

We arrived at the race course around 11:30, and after a cursory wander around, headed for the Golden Miller bar for midday (sun over the yard arm?) - superbly I got the message from Chie that Erika had gone to nursery just as we were about to have our inaugural drink of the day, and I was then able to enjoy it without feeling guilty.

I put small bets on most of the day's races, and had one big win of the day (Whisper in the Coral Cup, at 20:1). The payout from that left me with an overall profit for the day in terms of the betting, and almost paid the day's Champagne bill.

Mostly though I spent the day enjoying all the tweed and trilbies - whilst there isn't really a dress code as such, it's pleasing how many people do seem to make at least a bit of an effort. It was also very nice to be free of the shackles of the "no brown in town" rule and have absolute free rein to wear my tweed suit. Oh and my Lock and Co trilby (which I took for a quick check-up at their stall there).

Got the coach back to London at 6:30. It really wasn't that bad getting the coach both ways in the end (last year we'd got a lift with friends on the way back) - I'd somehow imagined people might be singing or some such, but in actual fact it was very quiet.

As the coach dropped us off at Victoria Coach station I couldn't resist the opportunity to round the day off which a quick pizza at Oliveto before heading home.

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