Mad dogs and Englishmen... picnic in horizontal rain at the Larkhill point-to- point course on inhospitable Salisbury Plain. As water sloshed out of the sky into whisky macs and pooled in the dimples of pork pies, a vision of my neighbour's Sunday drinks party-undiluted wine, crisp sausage rolls, fire-floated past. Examination of the disintegrating racecard revealed that Asklematic (‘Alfie'), pride of the Plantation Farm Picnic Syndicate, was entered in the very last race. Even his Shetland companion, Sweepy, who normally likes a picnic, looked glum.
* Subscribe to Country Life and save up to 41%
Then, a miracle. In a joyously stirring finish, Alfie got up by a length and a half to win under a brilliant ride from his lady jockey. ‘He did it easily,' Sweepy's toddler owner pronounced sagely from his vantage point on someone's shoulders. All 23 noisily whooping syndicate members, wet and cold forgotten, piled into the winner's enclosure for a picture and to hug the trainer Richard Bandey, who gets Alfie fit on the North Hampshire Downs at Kingsclere.
You can keep your concrete and covered stands, your fashion parades; point-to-pointing, steeplechasing's amateur arm, is the best fun you can have with a racehorse and a picnic. Alfie, meanwhile, heads to Towcester this Sunday. Get your money on!
* Follow Country Life magazine on Twitter
-
About time: The fastest and slowest moving housing markets revealedNew research by Zoopla has shown where it's easy to sell and where it will take quite a while to find a buyer.
-
Betty is the first dog to scale all of Scotland’s hundreds of mountains and hillsFewer than 100 people have ever completed Betty's ‘full house’ of Scottish summits — and she was fuelled by more than 800 hard boiled eggs.
