Author: Purple Brolly

The Cheltenham Festival ranks alongside other sporting events where one is sure to see the best performances in the most splendid facilities. Like the Wimbledon fortnight, for example, the four days of steeplechase horse racing at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire bear witness to catering on a gargantuan scale amidst the mobilisation of what amounts to a small village of 6,000 staff, including 350 chefs.

Add to that the multitude of race-goers and it is no wonder a train station was built there in 1912, a year after it was decided to fix the venue permanently at Cheltenham’s Prestbury Park. This was formerly part of a Bishop’s estate, with deer, rabbits, hares, oaks and thorn bushes a-plenty. Horse racing was taking place there by the 1830s and the Festival’s origins date from 1860. The Cheltenham Gold Cup, with prize money currently £614,813 for the winner, was inaugurated in 1924 and the cup itself is still the original.

One of the other, shorter, feature races is the Ryanair Chase and that airline puts on an extra 30 flights from Dublin to Birmingham for the Festival. Cheltenham Racecourse has been described as the world’s finest of its kind and the Festival easily attracts a knowledgeable daily attendance of up to 68,500 capacity.

(Image: Carine06 at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

England’s greatest cricketing rivals are Australia and 5-match Test series with them are known as ‘The Ashes‘ because of a wry joke started in 1882 by an English journalist and embellished by the wife of an Australian baron. The series takes place every 1½-2½ years during English/Australian summers and honours are fairly even between the two teams.

The joke was a tongue-in-cheek obituary for ‘English cricket’ penned by ‘Sporting Times’ reporter Reginald Brooks (1854-88) after Australia achieved their first victory over England on English soil, albeit by just 7 runs. The obituary whimsically stated “R.I.P. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. Brooks’s father Charles (1816-74) had previously campaigned for the right to be cremated, which was illegal until 1902.

England then toured Australia three weeks later with better success and at one venue the captain, Ivo Bligh (1859-1927, later Lord Darnley) was presented in jest with a small ‘urn’ containing ashes (thought to be of a lady’s veil) by the hostess and her children’s governess, Florence Morphy. Ivo and Florence were later married and they treasured the little terracotta urn until Ivo’s death, whereupon Florence donated it to the Marylebone Cricket Club Museum. Winners of The Ashes actually receive Waterford crystal replicas.

(Images LtoR: David Holt at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0, Gena1201 at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)