The past seven days really have been the best week of weather of the entire year, which really is remarkable as today is Sunday 2nd October. I believe that yesterday was the hottest October day ever recorded in the UK (three days after, apparently, the wettest September day ever recorded in Melbourne, to give a nice piece of dual-hemisphere symmetry) and really the weather has been perfect. We haven't quite managed the hottest day of the year, but for consistently and pleasantly high temperatures (in the upper 20s) for consistently
unbroken sunshine and consistently blue sky, and for consistently warm nights, the past week has taken the prize. And that's been lovely - which will be a memory which can comfort us on the cold and wet days and nights which lie ahead. It was great that we were able to share our lovely weather with visitors from down under: as their home-town of Ballarat shivered in the rain, we took Peter and Anita up to the north coast of Norfolk on Wednesday
afternoon to enjoy the splendour of Holcombe, where these lovely photographs were taken. I'm not sure that it's true to say that we went to the coast because the shore-line's gradient is very gradual there and when the tide's out (as it was when we were there) one stands on the shore and acknowledges that the sea is out of sight about two miles away, as is illustrated here. (Also illustrated are a few of the many geese who seem to fly over Holcombe as dusk looms). But that's just a minor quibble: our afternoon up there was about as idyllic as one can have, an outing whose memory I shall treasure forever.
Peter and Anita then accompanied us to Warwick the next day, where Ethics Girl (pictured about to enter the stalls) ran her usual bold race. Fourth in a decent staying handicap would have represented a decent run come what may, but she actually ran a bit better than that position would imply. Tom Queally rode her beautifully, and could hardly be held responsible for the fact that some of the jockeys around her (one of whom copped a suspension
for the interference caused to her) didn't seem able to make their mounts gallop in a straight line. She would have gone close had they ridden better, but as we were beaten over four lengths it might be stretching things to claim, "We woz robbed". She'd have completed a nice double had she won because our friends Chris and Shelley Dwyer (the latter seen below leading their filly in after the race) had already been represented by a winner: Imperial Fong, who overhauled in the dying strides a horse who seemed home and hosed (I was standing about 230m from home when I took
this photograph and Imperial Fong is the horse in second) to win the mile and six seller as the complete outsider of the field, confounding the racecard's assessment, "Established as a poor maiden for several trainers" (and she's still only three!) "and opposable again with latest effort at Lingfield woeful"! It is worth my saying, incidentally, that the ground at Warwick was much better than I'd expected, even if they had done a rather strange thing: up the straight, the quarter of the track nearest to the stands' rail was watered much less than the remainder, which means that the water put on the watered section was completely wasted as all the runners just came wide and up the stands' rail, which was an odd sight on fast ground.
Similarly summery was Fontwell yesterday, which too provided ground better than one could have expected at the end of such a hot week. I was told that it was genuinely nice fast ground there on Friday, but yesterday there was proper cut in the ground after the staff had watered again in the morning, leaving a surface which could genuinely be described only as good jumping ground - in fact, had it been a Flat meeting, there would probably have been a few horses taken out because the ground had been watered too much. So that was great, and we were able to run Frankie (pictured) in the bumper with a completely clear
conscience - I do worry about running at National Hunt meetings in very hot, dry weather. He didn't run quite as well as one might have hoped when finishing fourth (in a race which, as you can see, was at times hard to see because of the deliciously glaring late afternoon sun, light which ended the day as gloriously as it had begun - its beginning being shown by the photograph at the end of this paragraph of Kadouchski staring into the dawn while unwinding after his early-morning exercise) but that wasn't the end of the world. Frankie can go over hurdles now, and I'd imagine he should make his hurdles debut sometime around the end of the month. On an enjoyable day, one of the pleasures was seeing Mark Marris for the first time since his return from New Zealand, where he'd spent six months
and had ridden his first winner over jumps. Mark (whose head can be seen in the second photograph as he leads the horse following Frankie around the parade ring) is an excellent young rider who was formerly an amateur with Neil King and is now a conditional with Sarah Humphrey. He spent the first half of his stint in NZ working for a trainer at Dunedin and the second half working of the north island for the redoubtable Kevin 'Dummy' Myers and he found his trip as enjoyable as it was educational. And I really
enjoyed hearing about it. So that was good - as was the fact that another local rider had his photograph in yesterday's Racing Post. Dominic Fox should have featured in this blog after he rode a winner for Alan Bailey on his first race-ride for several years at Ayr's Western Meeting, not long after the death of his hugely popular father Richard. However, I failed to salute him on that occasion, so I'll make up for it now by saying how amused I was to see his photograph in yesterday's Racing Post. It was, mind you, captioned 'Kieren Fox' - whereas a less misleading caption might have been 'Kieren Fox doing his Dominic Fox impression'.
I believe that tomorrow will be the final day of this Indian summer. It won't be quite as hot, but it's still forecast to get to 26, and that's not to be sniffed at. We'll spend it at Warwick where we are set to have our first two-year-old runner of the season, Grand Liaison, who remains 'Sir Percy' in my mind. She ought to run adequately, although it's rarely wise to hold out high expectations for two-year-old debutantes from this stable. However she runs, she's a lovely filly who ought to have a nice future - and she's a well-mannered, kind filly too, so
fingers crossed she won't blot her copy-book at all. She's very good in the stalls (and is seen here jumping out on Friday morning on the far side of Zarosa, with Hannah and Terri being the two riders). The lovely weather in that photograph - and in the second photograph of this paragraph, taken the following lot while we were cantering around Side Hill all-weather - is just so typical of the week we've just had. It's surely going to be a long, cold, wet winter, so the fact that we have been able to end September and begin October with such idyllic conditions really is a bonus.
The past seven days really have been the best week of weather of the entire year, which really is remarkable as today is Sunday 2nd October. I believe that yesterday was the hottest October day ever recorded in the UK (three days after, apparently, the wettest September day ever recorded in Melbourne, to give a nice piece of dual-hemisphere symmetry) and really the weather has been perfect. We haven't quite managed the hottest day of the year, but for consistently and pleasantly high temperatures (in the upper 20s) for consistently 
unbroken sunshine and consistently blue sky, and for consistently warm nights, the past week has taken the prize. And that's been lovely - which will be a memory which can comfort us on the cold and wet days and nights which lie ahead. It was great that we were able to share our lovely weather with visitors from down under: as their home-town of Ballarat shivered in the rain, we took Peter and Anita up to the north coast of Norfolk on Wednesday 
afternoon to enjoy the splendour of Holcombe, where these lovely photographs were taken. I'm not sure that it's true to say that we went to the coast because the shore-line's gradient is very gradual there and when the tide's out (as it was when we were there) one stands on the shore and acknowledges that the sea is out of sight about two miles away, as is illustrated here. (Also illustrated are a few of the many geese who seem to fly over Holcombe as dusk looms). But that's just a minor quibble: our afternoon up there was about as idyllic as one can have, an outing whose memory I shall treasure forever.
Peter and Anita then accompanied us to Warwick the next day, where Ethics Girl (pictured about to enter the stalls) ran her usual bold race. Fourth in a decent staying handicap would have represented a decent run come what may, but she actually ran a bit better than that position would imply. Tom Queally rode her beautifully, and could hardly be held responsible for the fact that some of the jockeys around her (one of whom copped a suspension
for the interference caused to her) didn't seem able to make their mounts gallop in a straight line. She would have gone close had they ridden better, but as we were beaten over four lengths it might be stretching things to claim, "We woz robbed". She'd have completed a nice double had she won because our friends Chris and Shelley Dwyer (the latter seen below leading their filly in after the race) had already been represented by a winner: Imperial Fong, who overhauled in the dying strides a horse who seemed home and hosed (I was standing about 230m from home when I took 
this photograph and Imperial Fong is the horse in second) to win the mile and six seller as the complete outsider of the field, confounding the racecard's assessment, "Established as a poor maiden for several trainers" (and she's still only three!) "and opposable again with latest effort at Lingfield woeful"! It is worth my saying, incidentally, that the ground at Warwick was much better than I'd expected, even if they had done a rather strange thing: up the straight, the quarter of the track nearest to the stands' rail was watered much less than the remainder, which means that the water put on the watered section was completely wasted as all the runners just came wide and up the stands' rail, which was an odd sight on fast ground. 
Similarly summery was Fontwell yesterday, which too provided ground better than one could have expected at the end of such a hot week. I was told that it was genuinely nice fast ground there on Friday, but yesterday there was proper cut in the ground after the staff had watered again in the morning, leaving a surface which could genuinely be described only as good jumping ground - in fact, had it been a Flat meeting, there would probably have been a few horses taken out because the ground had been watered too much. So that was great, and we were able to run Frankie (pictured) in the bumper with a completely clear 
conscience - I do worry about running at National Hunt meetings in very hot, dry weather. He didn't run quite as well as one might have hoped when finishing fourth (in a race which, as you can see, was at times hard to see because of the deliciously glaring late afternoon sun, light which ended the day as gloriously as it had begun - its beginning being shown by the photograph at the end of this paragraph of Kadouchski staring into the dawn while unwinding after his early-morning exercise) but that wasn't the end of the world. Frankie can go over hurdles now, and I'd imagine he should make his hurdles debut sometime around the end of the month. On an enjoyable day, one of the pleasures was seeing Mark Marris for the first time since his return from New Zealand, where he'd spent six months 
and had ridden his first winner over jumps. Mark (whose head can be seen in the second photograph as he leads the horse following Frankie around the parade ring) is an excellent young rider who was formerly an amateur with Neil King and is now a conditional with Sarah Humphrey. He spent the first half of his stint in NZ working for a trainer at Dunedin and the second half working of the north island for the redoubtable Kevin 'Dummy' Myers and he found his trip as enjoyable as it was educational. And I really
enjoyed hearing about it. So that was good - as was the fact that another local rider had his photograph in yesterday's Racing Post. Dominic Fox should have featured in this blog after he rode a winner for Alan Bailey on his first race-ride for several years at Ayr's Western Meeting, not long after the death of his hugely popular father Richard. However, I failed to salute him on that occasion, so I'll make up for it now by saying how amused I was to see his photograph in yesterday's Racing Post. It was, mind you, captioned 'Kieren Fox' - whereas a less misleading caption might have been 'Kieren Fox doing his Dominic Fox impression'.
I believe that tomorrow will be the final day of this Indian summer. It won't be quite as hot, but it's still forecast to get to 26, and that's not to be sniffed at. We'll spend it at Warwick where we are set to have our first two-year-old runner of the season, Grand Liaison, who remains 'Sir Percy' in my mind. She ought to run adequately, although it's rarely wise to hold out high expectations for two-year-old debutantes from this stable. However she runs, she's a lovely filly who ought to have a nice future - and she's a well-mannered, kind filly too, so 
fingers crossed she won't blot her copy-book at all. She's very good in the stalls (and is seen here jumping out on Friday morning on the far side of Zarosa, with Hannah and Terri being the two riders). The lovely weather in that photograph - and in the second photograph of this paragraph, taken the following lot while we were cantering around Side Hill all-weather - is just so typical of the week we've just had. It's surely going to be a long, cold, wet winter, so the fact that we have been able to end September and begin October with such idyllic conditions really is a bonus. 
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