Day 164 - A one horse(race) town

The window at Cotswold Grey, a lovely furnishings
store on Moreton's High Street had these beautiful
horse head scuptures made using branches.

Moreton in Marsh has gone horse mad...well, that would certainly seem the case if one just perused the window displays on the High Street. Actually, every town, village and hamlet in the Cotswold goes a bit crazy at this time of year as today was the final day of the week-long Cheltenham Festival, one of the preeminent  meetings in the National Hunt racing calendars in the UK.

Cheltenham lies about 22 miles southwest of Moreton. We wrote about our visit there in a previous blog. It's held every year, usually around St Patrick's Day, and draws many to the Cotswolds, including many people from Ireland, where this type of racing originated.

National Hunt racing is what its called when horses jump fences and ditches in a race. This is distinguished further by hurdle races, where as the name suggests the horse jump over hurdles, and steeplechase where the horses jump over fences, water, and ditches.

Cheltenham's is one of the biggest races of the year (alongside the Grand National at Aintree, a village north of Liverpool). It's actually a collection of races held over four days:

• Champion Day: This first day of races is famous for the "Cheltenham roar," an enormous cheer from the crowd that emits when the starter lifts the tape for a hurdle race.
• Ladies Day: As you might expect at some point in a British Horse Race, on this day you'll see hats and finery on display. The Queen Mother Champion Chase takes place.
• St. Patrick's Thursday: Guinness, Irish music and a few races make up this rather celebratory day.
• Gold Cup Day: The big race day. This steeplechase covers a distance of 3 miles 2½ furlongs (5,331 m), with 22 fences to be jumped. The Chelthenham roar returns as the horse come up the hill. 

Cheltenham race course. Source:www.thefestival.co.uk

The Festival got its start in 1860, initially being called the Grand National Hunt Meeting. It was run at various locations until 1911 when it went to Cheltenham where it has remained ever since. This year, 260,000 people attended the event to watch races that gave out a total of £4,590,000 in prize money over a total of 28 races. As with any horse race, a lot of money is bet: £2,300,000 was withdrawn from cash machines at The Festival in 2016.

Sounds a bit rich for me. I think I'll just stay in town and admire the window displays.