The Battledown

Cheltenham Sanford Lido!!!!

by top_vapour

Swimming. You can go to the Sanford Lido very early in the morning and it closes quite late. Events are held quite often and the Lido is very big. It has a small pool for children and two small play areas as well as a small cafe for spending money on ice creams! What do youneed to bring? well a swimming costume might help.. goggles if you need them.. inflatables if you want towel.. suncream because you can get burnt in England very easily although everyone says its never sunny. and Money

CHELTENHAM - FESTIVAL FROLICS

by JohnnySpangles

"www.johnnyspangles.com"

There’s only really one reason to go to Cheltenham. If you were desperate for something to do of a Sunday afternoon then you might want to go and marvel at the regency splendour of the architecture. If you’ve got time before tea you might even want to take in the birthplace of Gustav Holst, composer of The Planets. You might even spend a few further moments pondering what he was doing being born in the Cotswolds with a name like that? As the sun sets in the evening, and the cloak of darkness shrouds your further activities, you might want to go hide behind a bush and ogle the posh girls at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. But apart from those semi-legal activities there’s not of a lot of other reasons to go.

That is unless you ignore the warnings of the Ides of March and turn up for the Cheltenham Festival. Next year’s event takes place on the 11th, 12th and 13th March. Well it’s almost the Ides

"www.johnnyspangles.com"

The festival has nothing to do with music, mud or spotty adolescents thinking they’re all grown up by being allowed to go sit in a tent with half a joint for three days. Fortunately it’s got everything to do with gambling and boozing. It’s a three day festival of National Hunt racing, that’s the downmarket side of horse racing that involves them going over jumps. This isn’t the sort of racing that involves oil sheiks, Dubai or ladies in expensive hats. Its blood and guts, force that bugger over that really high fence, hit it harder it’s got my cash on it type racing.

The population of Cheltenham doubles for these three days. It's mostly swollen by an influx of the Irish who have sold every EEC farming allowance they possess to get here. If they’ve not flown or ferried across then they’ve swum the Irish Sea. In a lot of ways the racing becomes secondary, other than occupying the afternoons. The evenings last until the next day and the doorsteps of every one of Cheltenham’s numerous pubs are awash with spilled Guinness and kebab vomit. So all in all it’s a barrel load of boyish fun and games.

"www.johnnyspangles.com"

You can usually get a ticket for the first two days by just turning up and paying around £12 to get in the cheapest part of the course. The third day is Gold Cup day, the cup final of British jump racing, and it tends to get sold out. So either book in advance via www.cheltenham.co.uk or buy from a tout. Accommodation is hard to come by in Cheltenham town centre, some of it is booked years in advance, but there are Festival/Tourist agencies that can help. Other than that you could always sleep in the gutter, that’s what most of the festival-goers end up doing anyway.