Cheltenham pulls plug on rest of season to fix home-straight drainage problems

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If you were planning a day at Cheltenham before the end of the jumps campaign, think again,The home of National Hunt racing said on Monday it will not stage another fixture until autumn, having taken the unprecedented decision to cancel its three remaining meetings in order to start major drainage works on the home straight over the summer months,The two-day meeting scheduled for 15-16 April and the track’s traditional season finale, a hunter-chase fixture and concert on 1 May, attracted a combined total of nearly 25k spectators in 2025,That is a long way short of the 56k daily average at the festival this month, but will still represent a significant loss in ticket sales and race-day revenue from food, drinks and betting,Potential drainage problems were highlighted in January when the final race of the Trials meeting, the last fixture at the course before the festival, was delayed for 29 minutes by the appearance of a hole in the home straight.

The course was thoroughly assessed, with checks including a ground-penetrating radar survey, before the festival, the showpiece event of the track’s season, but Jon Pullin, the clerk of the course, said on Monday that while “drainage improvements are typically carried out at the end of each season, given the scale of this project and the last two particularly dry summers, we have decided to bring this work forward”.Pullin confirmed that where the hole was discovered is the focus of attention.“Throughout the very wet winter, we have experienced a number of issues on the track,” he said, “and working with drainage experts, we have identified an area that would benefit from being upgraded.“This will allow us to address the issues we believe contributed to the hole appearing on Festival Trials day and subsequently created challenges in other areas of the track.As a result of this, we moved rail and hurdle positions to ensure we were providing the best surface for both the Old and New courses.

”Jockey Club Racecourses, which operates Cheltenham, said four races from the April meeting will be added to cards at Market Rasen, Warwick and Sandown.The hunter-chase fixture on 1 May will be staged at Warwick on the same evening.“We did look at contingency plans that might allow us to prioritise this work while also staging our April and May fixtures, but unfortunately it is not feasible to continue racing,” Pullin said.The next card at Cheltenham will be the first afternoon of the two-day Showcase fixture on 23 October.Guy Lavender, Cheltenham’s chief executive, said the decision to cancel the remainder of the course’s season was one “we gave a great deal of consideration to”.

Lavender said: “While we appreciate racegoers will share in our disappointment at not being able to stage our last three fixtures of the season, it is vital to give the racing surface time to recover and allow our grounds team to prepare the track for October and next season’s jumps programme,”Lavender arrived at Cheltenham in January 2025 with attendance at the festival meeting in freefall and a mission to address the decline,Attendance at the festival this year was up 3%, while the crowd figures for several days earlier in the season hit record levels,While the loss of three days’ racing at a track that schedules 16 all year is disappointing, the overall mood at what is, in many respects, the sport’s most important venue is likely to remain positive,When jumping fans reconvene at National Hunt’s spiritual home in seven months’ time, perhaps on one of those bright October days that often greet the start of the Showcase meeting, the hole in the home straight that caused chaos on a gloomy evening in January should be a distant memory.

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How to make Easter chocolate nests – recipe. | Felicity Cloake's Masterclass

Much as I love Easter eggs – and I really do, despite being that irritating person still nibbling away at them at Christmas time – these charming, crunchy little nests full of colourful treasure are up there with hot cross buns as my favourite seasonal produce. Top tip: they’re even easier to make if you enlist a small sous chef or two to help stir the pan!Prep 20 min Cook 5 minChill 2 hr Makes About 1280g Shredded Wheat (about 3½ full-sized ones), or other cereal (see step 1)75g dark chocolate (see step 3)100g milk chocolate 35g butter, or vegan alternative50g golden syrup 1 pinch salt ¼ tsp mixed spice (optional)Finely grated zest of ¼ orange (optional)36 miniature chocolate eggs (about 115g)Shredded Wheat (or another brand of similar cereal) is not the only choice here: you could substitute corn or bran flakes, puffed rice, Weetabix and so on, but it does look the most authentically twig-like. Try to get the big ones, if possible, because it’s all too easy to crush the bite-size variety to dust.Break the Shredded Wheat into pieces (leave flaked cereals, puffed rice and so on whole, and crumble Weetabix) in a large bowl – use your hands, the end of a flat rolling pin or glass, or the bottom of a smaller bowl to do this, and aim for a variety of lengths, rather than crushing the cereal to smithereens.Almost any chocolate will work here (this is, in fact, a great use of last year’s Easter eggs or Christmas chocolate, if you still have some left), though be careful with white chocolate, which doesn’t always melt well

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The Wellington, Margate, Kent: ‘Worth risking a werewolf attack to get to’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

The ever-changing menu is a paean to things that make me happyThe Wellington has been drawing crowds to Margate of late, due to a recent takeover by chef Billy Stock and front-of-house queen Ellie Topham. Stock is formerly of nearby Sète, which I loved very much, and also cooked at London’s The Marksman and St John, which is a pedigree that says: “I like feeding people proper food, not fancy, itsy-bitsy suggestions of food.” So with that, I set off to the south-east Riviera on a day when the weather ranged from hailstones to simply freezing gales.Much is said about Margate being freshly desirable, hip and charming, but on a freezing day at the tail end of winter, this seaside town certainly tests the prescription of one’s rose-tinted spectacles. None of the down-from-London brigade cries, “Let’s move to Margate!” as icy hail plink-plonks off their nose while they cower in the door of the Turner Contemporary

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Five Guys CEO says he gave a $1.5m bonus to his workers so he wouldn’t get shot in the back

Five Guys’ chief executive officer, Jerry Murrell, said he gave a $1.5m bonus to employees of his US-based burger restaurant chain because “I didn’t want anybody shooting me” after the company recently “screwed … up” a buy-one-get-one-free promotion.Murrell did not elaborate on the comment, which he gave to Fortune in an interview published on Wednesday – but it came a little more than a year after the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead on a midtown Manhattan street in what was widely considered a murderous rebuke of the US health insurance industry’s profit-driven practices.Fortune’s conversation with Murrell revisited a two-for-one promotion that Five Guys organized in February to celebrate its 40th anniversary that proved to be much more popular than the chain expected. Five Guys’ app crashed as customers sought to take advantage of the promotion, and many overwhelmed chain locations discontinued the offer early, inviting backlash on social media

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Ready to order? 10 rules for UK’s restaurant diners

Hospitality is in a right state at the moment, what with the seemingly never-ending shitshow of rising rents and rates, extortionate VAT, higher staffing, produce and utility costs, and all those other well-documented socioeconomic pressures (don’t mention the Bre*it word, please). So the last thing those of us who work in this beleaguered industry need right now is to be kicked in the proverbials by the very people we rely on perhaps more than anyone. And, yes, by that I mean you, our lovely customers. So here is some advice on how to avoid infuriating your serving staff.Turn up … Pre-Covid, most restaurants didn’t have the balls to take card details or charge for late cancellations and no-shows, but that’s all changed now (thank God)

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Is foraging really feasible to feed myself?

When I called Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist and author, his assistant answered. “We’re stopped really quick,” Marielle said, adding “he is harvesting a ton of wild onions right now. He’ll be on in just a minute.”I waited, curious to see his haul and bemused by his willingness to delay an interview for wild vegetables. I had called Greenfield, who wrote Food Freedom about the year he grew and foraged 100% of his food, to talk about how possible, or hard, it is to do just that

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Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for lemon lamington cake | The sweet spot

I think lamingtons should be much more popular than they are on this side of the world. One of my go-to coffee shops is Aussie-run and they always have a proud display of chunky, jam-filled, chocolate- and coconut-coated lamingtons. Making them isn’t complicated, just a little messy with all the filling and dipping of multiple cubes of cake in different bowls. In an attempt to streamline the process, and because giant versions of anything are always fun, I’ve made one extra-large lamington. It’s a wonderfully soft sponge, covered in lemon curd ganache and filled with plenty of cream, making for a very pretty Easter centrepiece