Ah a new
year full of promises of new experiences.
For most people New Year’s Day starts rather late and is accompanied
with a banging hangover where every sound grates like in the old Alka Seltzer
advertisement. No ‘plink, plink, fizz’
for me though as I spring out of bed bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Well no not quite. For me New Year’s Eve was quiet, I stayed in
to ensure that I was in a fit state to drive in the following morning. So at 9.30 I was in the car heading off to
North East Lincolnshire to pick up my friend Amy and treat her to her first
experience of racing under National Hunt rules.
New Year’s Day is the first day of racing for the new season membership
at Catterick. The last few years racing
have not been possible due to either snow or frost but thankfully 2012 was a
good day for racing if a little cold.
I have been
a member at Catterick (or Catterick Bridge if we are being accurate) racecourse
for 7 years now. Buying an annual badge
allows me to go to any meeting at Catterick, around 27 reciprocal meetings they
have negotiated at other courses and around 10 days at Yorkshire County
Cricket. Catterick is also one of the
few courses that offer the chance of buying a second transferrable badge to
take a guest and at £220 for the pair in 2012 this is good value for money
(remember I am a tight-arsed Yorkshireman).
It may sound a bit silly but it does feel good to put the little enamel
badge on and know you can go more or less as you please on the courses you
visit and in the members’ bar you usually get served in a proper glass or cup! I have kept the badges from earlier years
with a view to having them nicely framed one day. One thing that does make me piss myself with
laughter though is when you see plonkers with a huge collection of card day
member badges tied to their binoculars.
So they have been to a lot of race meetings, what do they do when they
go to a football match, take a rucksack of previous match programmes?
We arrived
a little later than usual so there was no chance of a swift pre-racing beer in
the Bridge Hotel – oh well there is always next time. This time I would have to make do with a
couple of halves of John Smith’s Smooth (yes I know I am a champion of real ale
but sometimes you have limited options available).
The racing
itself was hampered by small fields which mean that not every race was a good
betting option. The first race had short
priced favourite and second favourite so I decided to leave it alone and
watched. As it was the second favourite
South Leinster slogged home for jockey Wilson Renwick under testing conditions
which were officially soft but also
seemed to be ‘sticky’; a genuine test of stamina.
In the
second race I fancied Brunswick Gold ridden by Wilson Renwick for Steve
Gollings the Lincolnshire trainer. Form
indications were that it needed a longer trip and with the soft going it was
probably going to get a race to its liking, as it proved to be.
1:25 | 1
Brunswick Gold (K Renwick, 11-4 ); 4
Storming Gale (J M Maguire, 6-4 fav); 5 ran.
Distances: 12 lengths; 11 lengths;
Winning trainer: S Gollings.
Tote: £2.70; £2.70; £1.20; Exacta: £8.60; CSF: £7.24;
Winning trainer: S Gollings.
Tote: £2.70; £2.70; £1.20; Exacta: £8.60; CSF: £7.24;
A great
start and a swift double for Wilson Renwick and I was lucky enough to get on at
6/1! The next race didn’t prove to be as
successful for either of us. I backed
Kilkenny All Star which was a 17/2 second , beaten by 3½ lengths, by the well
fancied favourite Time Out (a great jazz album by Dave Bruebeck by the way); Mr Renwick takes a tumble off the back of Mr
Crystal (who was a horse just in case you are wondering). Alas the betting day was not to get any
better for me, a third was the nearest I could get; Wilson managed another
winner in the fourth race on Amir Pasha.
Such are the vagaries of racing a hat-trick of winners and a crashing
fall in the first four races. Amy drew a
blank, her best effort being a close second but backed to win.
After a hard
day’s racing one needs a decent tea. As
the weather was cold and it was a Bank Holiday we decided not to head off to
York or Harrogate, but to go to Xscape in Castleford. Xscape is an indoor ski slope complex which
also includes bars and chain restaurants like Ask, Pizza Express and Frankie
and Benny’s for which Bank Holidays are big days. In the end we ended up in Nandos which was a
New Year’s new experience for me. Amy
had been once before in London, where she used to work, whereas I hadn’t heard
of it until about six months ago. I
guess as The Christians would have said ‘this must be one of the
troubles of a-living in forgotten town’ or perhaps it is just a case of me not
having a clue what is happening in the fine city of Hull which has two Nandos! My view of Nandos was accordingly coloured by
what I had heard in the media and on Twitter and the like, which was fine
dining for Chavs.
My
first impression was; typical chain restaurant based on easy clean, rapid
turnaround, children friendly environment.
Service was friendly and prompt but it was a ‘note your table number and
place your order at the bar’ arrangement.
The menu was errr chicken, but then what should I expect from a ‘chicken
restaurant’. We had mixed olives as a
starter and selected a whole chicken platter with two different coatings, large
fires and coleslaw. My honest opinion
was it wasn’t bad at all. Let’s face it,
it is not too difficult to cook a chicken on a rotisserie and serve it with
frozen chips and coleslaw from an industrial sized bucket. Michael Owen must be in his element having
Tweeted about his love of roast chicken which prompted much merriment and piss
taking! It is not fine dining, but it
‘does what it says on the tin’ and I for one will not hesitate to make another
visit in 2012.
Links
BBC (for the
results – thanks!) http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/horse_racing/uk_results
No comments:
Post a Comment