Cheese Rolling cancelled after 200 years

Due to safety issues or some such crap, the historic Gloucester Cheese Rolling Event has been canceled after 200 years.  At least I can say I was there.

Cheese-rolling race axed after 200 years… thanks to health and safety killjoys

The event site, Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, near Gloucester, has a capacity of around 5,000 people.

Last year roads for miles around were blocked by traffic trying to get to the event and finding nowhere to park. The chaos led to calls for an overhaul of the event.

Eighteen people were injured last year. This was described as ‘low’ by St John Ambulance, though ten of the wounded were not competitors but spectators.

… Robin Hammond, of the Really Exciting Adventure Club, said: ‘I do understand the issues about the crowd but wish that the local authorities had worked harder to ensure that we don’t lose another part of our English culture to issues of crowd health and safety.’

Does this look dangerous to you?

And just in case you missed it, my video.

Say Cheese

If I had to pick my number one favorite memory from all of our time overseas I would not hesitate to name attending the Gloucester Cheese Rolling contest.  I wrote about it last year, but wasn’t able to share my video with you until this very special moment.

Cheese Rolling Contest 2008, 2nd Race.  I was there!!!

And that’s it for October – Month of Videos.

Happy Halloween!

Fun begins with a Cheese

I have had my heart set on seeing the infamous Gloucester Cheese Rolling contest since I read about it a week ago.  Nothing could deter me, not even the 80% chance of rain.  I dragged The Husband out of the flat early Monday morning and we set out to Gloucester.  We made it there by 10:30 and waited in queue to park on the already slippery informal car-park hill.

It took us almost 20 minutes to climb to the top via the very muddy path.  I could hardly walk up it let alone imagine throwing myself off the top and trying to run. 

We’d thought we’d left early enough to get a good spot but I think there must have been people waiting for hours.  We headed back down the path and found our way to the bottom of the hill.  We couldn’t really stand there due to the many waiting ambulances.  We finally found a spot to the left of the hill leaning on a tree.  I was very glad for the trees later when it really started raining.

Crash barriers:

Catchers, catching contestants as they make it to the bottom:

Cooper’s Hill, side view:

 

The first race started at noon.  It was hilarious and over very quickly.  There was a slight delay while an ambulance carried off the first casualty.  Then there was an uphill race for boys under 12.  One lad made it up the hill far ahead of the pack of twenty.  Most of them lost steam 3/4 up the hill and three poor boys were too exhausted to go on and had to be rescued by the catchers.  The ladies race was third and the winner was insanely fast.  She made it almost to the bottom of the hill without falling.  The knowledgable chap behind us commented, “This bitch is going to the beat the cheese.”   We started trying to leave after the fourth race and got caught in a wet, muddy, slow motion stampede of people at the bottom of the hill.  We understand how it is people get stampeded at a football matches.

I have a great little video of the second race and I’ve tried six times to upload it to both Youtube and WordPress but I keep getting a FAILED message.  So here’s the official clip: