Belinda and I had a fabulous night at Cheltenham Racecourse last night at The McCoy’s thanks to The Jockey Club for inviting us. A wonderful night where so many that give so much to our sport were rewarded. We had a fun table & were joined by Melissa Jones, who I sat next to and Dan Pallett (Midlands Today Sports Presenter) who sat next to Belinda along with Megan Furse who ensured that we had a fabulous time. We were even looked after by one of our team – Jemima Turner who helps us out when not studying at Oxford Brookes Uni, and who last night was our very glamourous waitress!
Undeniably the most special award of the night for us went to Clifford Baker who won ‘The Judges Choice’ Award for his commitment and dedication as Paul Nicholls’ right hand man so many years. Before Clifford worked for Paul he was Head Lad at David Nicholson’s and both Belinda & I learnt so much from him. He was understandably emotional and so were many of us too.
Freddie has had to organise his week of work experience for next July and The Baker Family have kindly offered to have him to stay so that he can work at Paul Nicholls yard so he’s very excited and very lucky indeed.
I went for a walk around Cheltenham this afternoon and whilst the course is good to firm and could do with some rain for us all there is no disputing that the whole team there have done a superb job throughout the dry summer and autumn we have all had. My new puppy Willow loved her Cheltenham debut! Back home and I’ve been watering our schooling ground with an extended watering system my handyman Lucjan helped adapt and the ground on our grass schooling ground should be super by Monday where I’m hoping to school plenty. We are so fortunate to have our own watering system.
We’ve had no runners this week but the team have worked really hard and as such we took them out to The Farmers Arms in Guiting Power for lunch on Tuesday which was absolutely delicious and a lot of fun was had by all – so no photos! Highly recommend it for great food and a really friendly welcome too. We’ve also taken the opportunity to give all the members of the team an extra afternoon off – they’ve been really grafting lately and have pulled together so well with no complaints and have just got on with it in good spirits so we wanted to reward them with extra time to themselves.
Looking forward to having runners next week but we have a few busy days with owner visits coming up so plenty to do.