Accommodation during Gold Cup week is often hard to come by with thousands of people flocking to Cheltenham. Cooks Green Cottage is a lovely countryside base for festival goers with 5 country pubs within a mile walk, and a 9 mile drive to Cheltenham racecourse. We have put up many happy racegoers so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us for your Gold Cup accommodation or any other Cheltenham races accommodation. The cottage sleeps 5 adults but we do also have a sofa bed in the living room so could sleep 7 in Gold Cup week.
2011 started with a bang for National Hunt goers at Cheltenham Racecourse with the traditional New Year curtain raiser. Prestbury Park was jam packed for the first National Hunt event of the year with not a space to sit or stand in sight and we can expect the same as we look forward to the 2011 Cheltenham Festival which takes place from Tuesday the 15th to Friday the 18th March.
Itinerary of the world famous Gold Cup Festival in March:
Tuesday 15th March: Centenary Day – 2011 marks the centenary of Cheltenham Festival, the permanent home for The Festival found in 1911 at Cheltenham. The most important hurdle race of the season, The Champion Hurdle will be the highlight of the occasion. Binocular, owned by JP McManus, trained by Nicky Henderson and ridden by AP McCoy, won it last year and is back to defend his crown from current favourite Hurricane Fly. There will also be six other races on Centenary Day and The Champion Hurdle will be almost as big as the Gold Cup this season.
Wednesday 16th March: Ladies Day – Celebrating the role of the fairer sex in Jump racing with some fun including the Ladies Day fashion awards. Seven races again on this day, the big one is the Queen Mother Champion Chase, won in 2010 by Ireland’s Big Zeb. The Queen Mother is always very interesting and will be no different this year with Master Minded current favourite for the big race in March looking to oust Big Zeb who will not give up easily as he has already had two good wins this season.
Thursday 17th March: St. Patrick’s Day – St Paddy’s Day will be celebrated in style with fashion awards and the St. Patrick’s Day Derby raising money for Cancer Reserach UK. The big race will see Big Bucks attempting to make history by being the first horse to win the Ladbrokes World Hurdle for a third time running.
Friday 18th March: Cheltenham Gold Cup Day – The pinnacle of the jump racing season is the Cheltenham Gold Cup. The crowd will be massive and all eyes will be on Imperial Commander, trained by our local friend Nigel Twiston-Davies, to see if he can match his feat from last year of winning the Gold Cup. Again there are another six races this day.
Ok, so that’s the main event, but there are of course other race meets at Cheltenham. Prior to the Cheltenham Festival and Gold Cup week we have the Festivals Trials Day on 29th January. We then have the April Meeting on 13th and 14th April before Cheltenham’s season finale on May 4th, the Hunter Chase Evening.
And it’s not just Cheltenham: Point to point courses can be found at Maisemore, Andoversford and Upton-on-Severn, all local to our Cottage holiday let.
If you come to stay at Cooks Green Holiday Cottage you might be lucky enough to come at a time when we have horses grazing in the field behind us. At different times throughout the year our local farmer grazes his ponies in the field that backs on to our garden and other fields in the countryside around the house.