Here in Britain, we’re recovering from the bank holiday (which is a strange phrase meaning a long weekend) by soaking in a bit of rain and looking back to one of the more bizarre events in a country full of bizarre events, the Gloucester Cheese Rolling, which took place over the holiday. The link you just skidded past will take you to an earlier post about it. Briefly, it’s a race in which contestants chase a cheese down a very steep hill.
I mention this because Ubi Dubium was kind enough to send me a link to an article about this year’s cheese race. Follow it and you’ll find lots photos of people who’ve fallen over and are rolling downhill, as well as a description of the race as “twenty young men chasing a cheese off a cliff and tumbling 200 yards to the bottom, where they are scraped up by paramedics and packed off to hospital.” Except that when I was there it involved a lot more than twenty and they weren’t all men. Other than that, I won’t quibble.
Okay, they weren’t paramedics. The local rugby team was at the bottom of the hill. Still, it does give you the flavor of the thing.
As long as we’re at it, here’s another article on the race, about a runner who’s won his twenty-first gloucester cheese, setting an all-time record. Among other things, it tells you that he doesn’t like gloucester cheese. He eats cheddar. The trick to winning, he says, is to stay on your feet. Which is like saying the that the trick to winning a marathon is to be faster than everybody else.
And since we’re talking about cheese, you can also read about the much tamer Stilton Cheese Rolling Championship by following this link or you can go vegan and read about the World Pea Shooting Championship here.
After all that, will anyone dare say that reading Notes isn’t educational? Or that Britain isn’t a very strange country?
I’ve read about this race somplace before, would love to attend! 😎😬🧀🧀
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It’s insane and quite wonderful. What I wouldn’t recommend is participating.
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I for one want to see grown people rolling Stilton down the road! Sometimes you have to make your own fun.
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And then you have to convince a few hundred other people to do it with you. That’s the hard part.
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Bribes😉
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Now why didn’t I think of that?
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Am quite disappointed they use a foam replacement in Gloucester and a wooden one in Stilton. Fake cheese.
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And, as I was told when we went, the fake ones just don’t bounce the same way. A very sad state of affairs.
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Well what do you expect from soft- southerners? Up here where we hold the Annual Egg Jarping Championships every Easter, we’re still using hard boiled proper non-fake eggs! :) https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/forget-chocolate-easter-eggs-follow-11085067
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I could live three lifetimes in this country and not take it all in. And that’s not even asking to understand it.
Thanks for this. I’ll post something on it, but probably not today. I need to shovel the house out while it’s still possible.
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I’m probably the only person reading this who thinks it’s a perfectly normal thing to do.
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Entirely possible. A fair number of people wouldn’t mind seeing it, though.
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Bizarre, yes. But perhaps slightly more sane than the running of the bulls in Spain. I’ve never quite understood that one.
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True. However steep the hill, that cheese won’t turn and chase you back up it.
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Any islander, anywhere, will play any daft game to cope with the vagaries of the weather! ;-)
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I knew there was an explanation somehow, somewhere.
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I suppose I could think of worse things, like the bull running mentioned previously. Folks certainly don’t lack imagination to come up with extremely weird things to do in their spare time.
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The older I get, the more often I find myself saying this: We are a very strange species.
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I can only agree with that sentiment! 🤨
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I would love a holiday dedicated to chasing cheese! Sign me up for next year!
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I don’t know about an entire holiday. The gloucester race is so steep that it’s over in no time. I’m not sure about the other one–that may take longer. There’s also a flaming tar barrel festival and I can’t help wanting to combine them so we end up with a grilled cheese sandwich festival. Or maybe a fondue festival.
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Now this is really funny. I think the rugby team at the bottom of the hill definitely depicts the ‘flavor’ of the event. Well said! You wear the British humor well, Ellen, in words.
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Thanks. I loved the quote but just had to quibble.
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Ha ha!
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