Good For The Roses

If, like me, you’ve been ignoring your garden for the past few days while attending the races at Cartmel, there is good news for the weekend ahead.

 

The Holker Garden Festival commences on Friday and continues throughout Saturday and Sunday. The weather forecast is excellent so we’ll be able to enjoy a day in the sunshine, with an ice-cream or three, while perusing the plants. The gates open each day at 10.00am and there’s plenty to see.

 

For those craving equine entertainment, the Devil’s Horsemen will be performing acts of daring-do and amazing stunts on the showground. Anyone suffering withdrawal symptoms from the races can enjoy a special Lamb Grand National as well as racing of the terrier variety.

 

You won’t go hungry – our good friends from Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding, Cartmel Cheeses, Cartmel Brewery, Furness Fish & Game, the Fat Flour Bakery, Gee’s Meringues and Rowleys Catering will all be there.

 

As soon as I get a chance, I’ll be weeding out the Equisetum Arvense (horsetail to you and I) and planting a few more roses. Last year I purchased Blue For You and Twice In A Blue Moon. They have been well fed with manure from the racecourse stables and are now, for want of a better phrase, ‘blooming’ marvellous. I’ll be looking for more – so if you get there first, please leave one for me!

 

Ten years ago I would probably have given Saturday a swerve and stayed at home to watch Suggestive win the John of Gaunt Stakes at Haydock. It was ten years ago, almost to the day, that RacingUK was launched – so I wouldn’t have known then what I know now: I can watch the racing pretty much wherever and whenever I want on my mobile phone, I could access all the form on an i-pad (if I had one) and catch up with the replays on television when I get home.

 

So there’ll be no excuses for missing this week’s selection, Amarillo, who seeks a repeat victory in the John of Gaunt Stakes having won the race in 2013. If you want to see how he did it last year, simply sign up to RacingUK now and you can watch for yourself.

 

RacingUK covers virtually all the best racing action in Britain, including Cartmel races, but sadly not the Lamb Grand National at the Holker Garden Festival. To see that you’ll have to get over to Holker Hall in Cark, just two miles from Cartmel Racecourse.