A very alcohol fuelled day 1 of the Cheltenham Festival with my good friends Vince McVerry, Arthur Guinness and Sailor Jerry!!
One of those "Boys days out" that was perfect, including the betting success as I pulled a losing day out of the ashes with a place bet on a 66/1 horse!!
My wife and I are lucky to be members of Cheltenham, so we have access to a small members only stand that is such a great viewpoint. This is where Vince and I based ourselves yesterday and where these 2 shots are from.
The top shot is a view up the course to show the crowds, which were huge. 50,000 people yesterday, the same today and tomorrow, and 60,000 on friday. I am having a day off today to get some work done, and dry out. Then back down this evening with some friends for dinner and back to the course on thursday and friday.
The scond photo is of Rock on Ruby, the winning horse in the Champion Hurdle race being lead back in to the Winners Enclosure. For those of you who know your sports commentators, the winning jockey, Noel Fehily, is being interviewed by Claire Balding of the BBC.
The day was marred by the very sad deaths of 3 horses, including a lovely old horse called Garde Champetre. Thanks for the memories GC, I will wear something green and yellow in your memory tomorrow.
These are taken with my Nikon Coolpix, which I have decided is an awful P&S, so as of today it is redundant, and has been replaced by a Panasonic Lumix TZ20, the poor mans Leica!!
Great atmospheric shots and good detail of the horses and crowd. Sounds like a great day, just sad about the horses. My friend is a great horse fan and will love to see these photos.
@ladyjane@susieb Ha ha. So far I love the Lumix, I think it is funny that Leica have the exact same camera for £500 and I paid £200 just because it has a different name!!
(Not really, I'm just messing with ya.)