Hexham, as you will know by now, is on the way to everywhere and, indeed, from everywhere. This time it's on the way from Ascot to the frozen North. Ladies Day which we missed last year due to weather but no such concerns this year. There was a very slight concern when the Sat Nav (mine's called Sally) took me off at Penrith and sent me via Kilimanjaro. I only saw bikers and sherpas. And eventually Hexham.
I like Hexham as you well know. I'm scared to leave my LED board on my trolley for fear it will be soon be parked up at the furlong pole, the joint needs scaffold to stay upright and you feel slightly sea-sick, especially when betting downhill, but I like it. I also like that I can sneak in a song from Fables of the Reconstruction for John. We're never Sitting Still at CairnBet (I know it's not on Fables before you fill up the comments) We bet uphill next to Peter. We knew that we'd nearly die laughing even if the betting was bad. We nearly did die laughing and, later on, the betting was particularly bad if you're wondering.
1 ) It was Ladies Day and there were a lot of families there as well. A number of families looked at our board and hastily moved on. Perplexed, as I was sure I had showered that morning and even Steve didn't look particularly grumpy, until it dawned on me that we had our Ascot £5 minimum bet advert up and I hastily changed it to £2. Steve was grumpy then, but immediately we started to refill the change we went through at Ascot. Plenty of bets, small bet size but plenty of bets. We were cautiously optimistic as the first is usually the worst but the overall take was less than one fairly decent bet in front of the bar at Ascot. Different day, different demographic and, it must be said, the expenses for the day came in at 10% of the Ascot one, all things considered. We stood For Three and Albert Park for more than our "half of what we take" rule, which isn't saying much. A middle of the road winner for us with Malangen and we'd have preferred the fast finishing Kopa Kilana.
2) 5 smallish losers and the smallest one of them, Jeteye, gave us a baby step backwards. Betting was marginally up. Peter was making us laugh. We'd had a decent Ascot so we were still in good spirits.
3) Our straight bat brethren would be pleased that we had the jolly in for the max and won very nicely on rank outsider Pop The Question. Did well to avoid that one on Ladies Day.
4) Totally stress free race as our two maxes, Vanilla Dancer and Lathan, doubled in price and ran like they'd doubled in price. The 2nd horse, and favourite, RS Ambush was marginally better than the winner Kilmore Rock but no matter, we were doing nicely.
5) And then the bottom fell out of the betting market. A dismal take led to our best result in the book still not winning us much. The chat levels increased as the turnover collapsed.
6) No improvement here and we knew we were going to be fiddling for coppers for the next 90 minutes. Grain Doudarie for the max, Carcaci Castle a good winner in the context of a very flat book.
7) Goodness me. We were down to a couple of hundred quid take. We lost small on Backby Jet and were counting our blessings that we'd got a few early quid.
8) Things were much the same in the last. We won the back the small amount we lost with the smashed up, odds on, favourite.
Overall we had a good win on a very low take but only because virtually everything was in our favour. We may have picked wrong in retrospect but we will be 50/50 whether to return next year.
So we're up to date with the blogs and are next out for a double header at Newcastle for the Plate meeting. Music night on Friday is the first one, which will be a House of Fun, let's hope we're not an Embarrassment. Until then...
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