When people ask where I’m from it’s usually followed by a “LOL. WHERE!?”
Such is life when you didn’t grow up in one of the major English cities!
One place that people have heard of in this charming little hometown of mine however, is Goodwood.
There are two parts to Goodwood; the Motor Circuit and the Race Course.
The events at Goodwood Motor Circuit are filled with cars from every era and petrol heads alike,
whereas the events at Goodwood Racecourse are filled with horses, gamblers and fashionistas looking to take their latest garment out for a spin.
I had never been to Goodwood races before.
It always seemed like something I wouldn’t enjoy.
However, despite that, I’m a firm believer in trying (almost) everything once so when a friend rocked up with tickets to the races, I nipped in to town to find myself an outfit.
Sunday rocked round and despite the miserable dark clouds that were roaming overhead the weather held out and we were off, transported by the craziest taxi driver I have ever had the sheer unfortunate luck of being driven by. Turning cars were dodged around, grass verges were driven on and pedals hit the floor as he drove at speeds that cars along country roads should never climb too.
At 2pm we arrived and with our feet on solid ground we went straight to the bar to settle our nerves.
With Pimms.
Obviously.
Humans of all sizes and ages had dressed up in their Sunday best ready to see what Goodwood had to offer. The race’s themselves were pretty small, due to it being the end of the season, with around 5-9 horses in each race. Which I actually preferred because it meant the horses had more space to run.
Betters queued up, jockeys jested and horses chomped at their bits raring to go.
Soon they were off and as the horses pounded towards the finish line everyone watched eagerly anticipating whether their horses would bring home the bacon.
And mine did… TWICE!
Now if you’re looking for tips on how to win I’m afraid I really can’t help you because I pretty much just picked two horses with the coolest sounding names and bet a couple of quid on them to go each way. My friend laughed at my method, but lets face it. I won so clearly it works and totally wasn’t just a coincidence…
The hype had kickstarted my hunger, so after that it was time for pizza
Unfortunately it was more like cheesy dough than pizza because it had absolutely NO flavour, but if you forgot that you had ordered pizza and tried to imagine that you had ordered cheesy garlic bread without any garlic, then it was fine… Especially if you had skipped breakfast and been drinking.
A quick stroll around the race course later and we realised we were hungry for flavour so we cut the races short and head off on a quest to find food instead.
