Tag: racing

Its that time of year again..

… when the roads are gridlocked, the pubs and restaurants are full to over flowing and you can’t actually enjoy living in town.

Yes that’s right – its The Cheltenham Festival. When the world and his dog descends on the town, drinks too much Guinness and then throws up or pisses in the street.

So just what is the impact of the festival on town? Well it took 90m minutes for me to do a round trip to Gloucester today (about 30 minutes longer than normal) and the roads are a complete mess. Its not worth going out for a drink because everywhere is full of drunks from the racecourse. And of course THEY are more important than the locals because they are so pissed and flash with the cash that they don’t notice if they are over charged, and don’t even think about trying to go and eat somewhere.

I don’t want to even think about the carbon foot print of the festival. 4 days, approx 60,000 people per day. Thats a lot of cars/buses/coaches. Then there’s the shipping (and storage and preparation) of all the beer and food they consume over the four days and nights at the racecourse and down in town, and the placing of over 3 miles of “no parking” cones because these people will park ANYWHERE – they don’t give a toss about anyone else, and the shipping in of all the horses, the jockeys and the racing teams.

Then what about the litter, the mess that the council have to clear up (and I wonder who picks up the bill for that), and the policing? Tons of drunk drivers around and tons of people drunk and disorderly but no-one seems to get stopped/charged/fined.

But its “good for the town” apparently… not sure how

Today is a good day…

To stay at home.

There is an afternoon of racing on at Cheltenham Racecourse – its the first meeting of the National Hunt season. So going anywhere by car than involves going over that side of town is a totally stupid idea.

But what is there on TV – build up to the Rugby World Cup final and coverage of the qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.

And its not going to be much better this evening either – the Rugby World Cup is on and all the pubs will be full, especially with the Racing finishing a couple of hours before the rugby starts, which could explain why the Royal Oak is tickets only tonight.

So staying in the house and doing odd jobs seems like a sensible thing to do.

I’ve fixed the front door lock (which had managed to get jammed in the deadlocked position) and I’ve fixed the door latch on the inner door in the front lobby which should help keep the draughts out as that front lobby can get remarkably cold at night.

Ahhhh – Life Returns to Normal

Well life in Cheltenham returns to normal. All the race goers who piled into town for the Gold Cup have now left, or are in the process of leaving. There were 52,000 for the first 3 days and 65,000 on the last day – still they had good weather for it, and I’m sure they had a good time. But I for one, am glad that they have gone.

The houses behind us are coming on at a speed so it will only be a couple more weeks before the excessive amount of light pushed out by the Sainsbury’s store, which currently lights our bedroom up like there is a full moon outside, is blocked by the new development.