The Open

Posted on 2015/11/15 10:04:29 (November 2015).

[Friday 13th November 2015]
I seem to have been rather craving the countryside recently - this has manifested itself both in our excursion to Huntingdonshire last weekend, and my plan (which has been postponed) to go to the Bell at Aldworth earlier this week. Moreover I've been wanting to escape the dull drudgery of modern attire which I get crammed up against on my commute to and from work every day, and, while we're at it, just escape the commute altogether, which I've really not been enjoying the past couple of weeks. Roll on the move to Kings Cross next year.

So since being reminded that The Open was on at Cheltenham Racecourse, starting today (sort of a lesser version of the Festival in March) a few days ago I hadn't been able to get it out of my mind. I had ummed and arred about whether I would actually go, what with the weather not looking too promising, and the fact it was a bit of a trek to get there, but by this morning the urge was overwhelming. So I donned my tweed suit and, with some irony, got on a horribly overcrowded commuter train to Paddington.

From Paddington the journey was a lot more civilised, it was easy to find a seat, and it seemed most of the other people on the train were also bound for Cheltenham Racecourse. From Cheltenham to the course a shuttle bus was laid on, and by around 12:30 I was there, admiring all the tweedy outfits and feeling very pleased that I had made the effort.

I don't think anybody I know really gets why I enjoy coming to Cheltenham so much - it's my third time now (two festivals, and this was the first time at the open). Whilst I do always have a flutter on the horses, since I'm here, the racing is actually secondary to me to the anthropological fascination of being in such a high concentration to the sort of people I assume to be the core readership of Country Life. And not the aspirational types who daydream unrealistically as they're flipping through the full page property ads for sprawling country estates, but the people who actually live in those grand houses.

On arrival I headed straight for the new grandstand, which was officially opened by Princess Margaret today (alas I missed the ceremony by half an hour or so, and the Princess Royal had by this point, presumably, retreated to a private box). I took a quick pass by the new Champagne bar there, but it seemed perhaps too new to have yet developed much character, so I instead decamped to the more familiar setting of the Golden Miller bar in the older grandstand. This seems to be where many of the more well heeled racegoers congregate, and the combination of particularly elegant tweeds and ubiquitous Champagne bottles is something I always find rather exciting.

As for the actual racing, I put a modest bet or two on every race apart from the last one, and overall made a slight profit thanks to a bit of luck in the 2:15, but really all of that played second fiddle to the people watching, which I just found spellbinding.

The other highlight was discovering there was a Gwatkin Cider stand there - I'd never seen that at the two previous visits to the Festival. That led to a bit of internal conflict, I had intended to spend the afternoon nonchalantly quaffing Champagne, but on finding Gwatkin I instead worked my way through their ciders and perry and somehow didn't feel like going back to the fizz afterwards. I noticed with the exception of one or two ladies ordering the hot cider, motivated almost entirely by the chilly weather, the tweed wearing classes were not really patronising the cider stand at all.

I left before the last race, keen to get an early train so I'd be back in London before Erika's bedtime. So in the end I spent over 7 hours in transit today, for the sake of only spending about 3 hours actually at the racecourse. But I still enjoyed it, in my own bizarre way.

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