We bought the racegoers package which included a "Behind the Scenes Tour" and were in the jockeys' weighing room when Paul Nicholls walked in. His 14 year old daughter, Megan, was riding in the second of the pony races before the first Rules of Racing race.
Chepstow is a lovely picturesque course but would have looked much prettier on a sunnier, drier day with rolling hills in the background instead of mist from the Wye and low low cloud. The course itself is about 2 miles round with 2 long straights and 2 bends and several ups and downs and rollercoasteresque dips and dives. Your selected horse could be in the lead going down a dip and out of sight but then have tailed off when coming back into view over the brow of a hill. Today the going was so soft to gloopy we were looking for plodders, mud-lovers and definite stayers. From under our brollies.
Megan Nicholls was riding Wotarisk who set off, unsurprisingly, as favourite and because our tour had taken us to one of the best placed corporate boxes overlooking the winning post, we stayed there and watched her romp home by several lengths.
It was a great box and we could have happily stayed up there for the afternoon -in the dry with a tight hand on our cash - and gone home as rich as we had set out, but Roger, our tour guide, found us and we had to go back down into the rain.
It was rain of biblical proportions. Brollies dripped all over the people who weren't under them. The Bank Holiday fun day for children was a washout. We only saw one painted face and that was on a grown up who must have felt sorry for the lady or was the stag on a stag do, surely no-one slid down the slide, quested lasers, bounced on the castle or boinged on a trampoline.
Meanwhile Coventry City were over the other side of the River Severn being beaten by Bristol City. But my plastic mac was PERFECT! (OK, rain rolled off it and on to my shoes but hey)
Despite having a wet soggy race card, damp betting tickets and wet feet we had a great day, it was lovely to catch up with my brother who looks just the part here in Husb's "trainer" cap...
...we had a free drink and we all had winners. Quote Husb, "All my tenners are soggy and sticking together". Shame! Black Thunder (aptly named for the weather conditions)
***easily won the first race giving us a bit of cash to play with (so Paul Nicholls wasn't just there for his daughter then), Husb had the next two, I backed Pancake and Diddy backed Kindly Note.
It was hard work at times juggling camera, phone, purse, betting tickets and racecard and trying to keep them all dry but we enjoyed the day. I'm not sure whether Roger Lewis' guided tour could actually be classed as such, it merely involved a visit to the weighing room and a chat in the nice box but he was a very lovely man, bless. And I did have a photo with Paul Nicholls.
Chepstow Racecourse.... that's one more racecourse ticked off.
*** Brownie backed him too.
No comments:
Post a Comment