And so that was 2025...

Another year, our fourth reviewing British racecourses, and another 10,300 miles travelled driving up and down the country in all weathers. That puts us just a few miles short of 40,000 miles in the four years we've been doing this - enough to circle the Earth 1.6 times or drive a sixth of the way to the Moon.

We revisited thirty-three racecourses (some more than once), which leaves us just one racecourse (Ayr) short of having visited and reviewed every British racecourse at least twice. No other site can claim that. And it would have been zero if December hadn’t thrown a spanner in the works when wet weather forced the abandonment of our scheduled return visit to Ayr Racecourse. Fingers crossed we make it back there in January 2026, and that it isn’t abandoned again. During 2025, we deliberately returned to all of the racecourses that were at the bottom of our rankings table at the end of 2024. Had we got it wrong? Had we been too harsh? As it turned out, some we had, others we had not. Even if a racecourse ranks badly in our table, that doesn't mean that we don't like it, or that you shouldn't visit it. Hexham, Ffos Las, and Hereford Racecourses sit at the bottom of the table, but we like them. They’re just not quite as 'polished' as some of the others, that’s all. 

Here at 2blokesgoracing, we believe that our racecourse review website is different from others because they only visit a racecourse once. Not us. Things change: admission prices, food and drink, facilities, special offers...the lot. Just a couple of years is enough for a racecourse to feel completely different, and a dual-code racecourse is a different beast altogether at a flat meeting in August than it is at a jumps meeting in January. And we like to think our repeat visits keep the racecourses on their toes, preventing them from resting on their laurels, thinking that we're never going to drop in on them again. As a result, our ratings table is constantly changing - every visit counts. If a racecourse improves, it shows immediately. If it slips, you’ll see that too. The table reflects our most recent experience, not a visit from years ago. It’s also an incentive for racecourses to keep raising their game, giving us racegoers a better, value-for-money day at the races. 

2025 saw us head out on two 2blokesOnTour trips. The first was an early-April visit to Kelso and Carlisle racecourses, with the second in December to Musselburgh and Newcastle racecourses - the latter a very late diversion after the Ayr meeting was called off. Looking ahead to 2026, we have just one 2blokesOnTour trip scheduled, at the moment, with a late-April visit to Pontefract and Redcar Racecourses. We’re really looking forward to getting back to Yorkshire and expect to be up there plenty throughout the year, with return visits also planned to Beverley, Catterick, Doncaster, Thirsk, and York racecourses. We're also contemplating a trip abroad, to Ireland or France, to take in a racecourse there, but we'll probably not write a review on it. We will, however, be videoing those visits...and that brings us to Instagram, and our Instagram page. We're still relatively new to it, and if I'm honest, I haven't really got much of a clue what I'm doing, but the ninety-second videos of our racecourse visits on the site receive quite a lot of views, even if we've not got many followers yet. Hopefully, that will improve moving forward, and if you haven't checked out the short videos yet, then please do so. You don't need an Instagram account to do so, just click on the little pink Instagram tab at the bottom of our homepage, or at the foot of any racecourse review. 

Our 2blokesgoracing website has gone from strength to strength, continually gathering momentum and, we hope, contributing to a better race-day experience for racegoers like ourselves. As the site has grown and reached a wider audience, it has also become more professional in tone, which has meant reining in some of the stronger language that featured in our earliest reviews. That said, our reviews remain honest, unbiased, and to the point, and we hope, just as entertaining. And even if some of those expletive thoughts no longer make it onto the page, rest assured, they’re still very much being thought and said to each other.

In 2025, we braved Storm Amy on our return visit to Hexham Racecourse in early October (as if it's not cold enough there) and experienced the worst journey to a racecourse ever on our return journey to Newton Abbot Racecourse. There were accidents on both carriageways of the M5, and every alternative route was jammed. Utter chaos. We’d left with enough time to arrive at the racecourse with two hours to explore, make notes, and take photos/videos. By the time we parked, we’d missed two of the six races. Brilliant. In contrast, the best weather we had at a racecourse in 2025 was our return visit to Newmarket's July Course. Already one of our favourite racecourses, the sweltering weather, together with some rather lovely ladies dressed in next to nothing, made it a very memorable experience. You'd have thought our visit to Glorious Goodwood would have been the same, but it wasn't. It was ruddy freezing. As memorable as the return visit to Newmarket's July Course had been on that hot summer's day, it was bettered by another visit to the racecourse, on one of their Newmarket Nights, the following month. I returned with my wife for a day of fantastic racing, followed by Faithless, one of my favourite bands. It was a truly awesome day/night. And Newmarket Racecourse is also the location of another of our highlights of the year, this time at their Rowley Mile Course, in early October. Now and then, we like to treat our better halves, and so we booked their VIP Champions Gallery Experience. Not cheap, but a totally fantastic experience and something we'd definitely recommend for a special occasion - both Newmarket experiences can be seen in our Instagram posts. But, as brilliant as these two experiences were, our most memorable and proudest experience of 2025 was at Musselburgh Racecourse in December, with the running of the 2blokesgoracing.com Handicap Chase. Never in our wildest dreams did we ever think we'd have a race named after our little website. It was truly brilliant, and we also got to choose the best turned-out horse and present the connections of the winning horse, Benefit Ben, with the winner's prize. We also dined like Kings in their Harris Tweed Bistro - Cheg literally eating his weight in food. A great day, and a massive thanks to Musselburgh Racecourse. Our luckiest racecourse, betting-wise, in 2025, proved to be Chester Racecourse, where we both amassed five winners.

We also met and chatted with some lovely people involved in horse racing. Ed Chamberlain (ITV Racing), Gordon Brown, Mark Howard, Martin Dixon, Tom Stanley, Graham Cunningham (Racing TV), Callum Helliwell (Sky Sports Racing), and trainer Rebecca Menzies couldn’t have been friendlier and were only too happy to chat. And, once again, it was great to bump into paddock expert Ken Pitterson and Irish racing commentator Jerry Hannon; both genuinely lovely blokes who we consider our friends.

We had plenty of chats with racecourse head honchos during 2025 - some face-to-face, some over the phone, and some via email. Not all racecourses are ignorant of reviews. Some actively encourage them: York, Newmarket, Beverley, Kempton Park, Lingfield Park, and Sandown Park racecourses, in particular, all spring to mind. But, disappointingly, some racecourses are the antithesis of these, who can’t even be bothered to send a courteous “thanks, got it” reply when I forward our review to them. And it's not just us. We’ve spoken to other racecourse reviewers and also vloggers, and they’ve had the same experience - some racecourses just never respond. At the end of last year, we promised on this very page that we’d name and shame those racecourses that have never responded to receiving our reviews. The racecourses on our ‘list of shame’ represent 9.6% of the sixty British racecourses. Bear in mind that we’ve visited every British racecourse at least twice (excluding Ayr), some of them three or four times, but those that have never replied to a review from us are:

Aintree, Ascot, Ayr, Carlisle, Exeter, Goodwood, Market Rasen, Nottingham, Redcar, Sedgefield, Taunton, Uttoxeter, Warwick, Wincanton, Windsor, and Worcester.

It's not a list that it's good to be on. That said, it’s often less about the racecourse itself, or whether it’s Jockey Club or ARC-owned, and more about who’s in charge of the racecourse at the time. We’ve had racecourses respond to a first review, only for a new Executive Director or General Manager to arrive, and the next review gets ignored. And the reverse happens too: no response at first, then a change in personnel, and suddenly we get a reply. In our opinion, not only is it rude not to at least send an acknowledgement of receipt, but we think ignoring a review that’s basically free market research for them, highlighting what customers actually experience on a race day at their racecourse, speaks volumes about the racecourse, or the person in charge, in a broader sense. By the same token, those in charge who do take the time to respond show that they genuinely care about their customers and their racecourse. And it has to be said, there are some truly fantastic people running Britain's racecourses. So a huge 'big up' to them. 

So, at the end of 2025, who were the 2blokesgoracing top ten-ranked British Racecourses? And who were our top ten-ranked Smaller British Racecourses of 2025? Scroll down to find out. You can also watch the countdown videos for both on our Instagram page. And you can find where all sixty racecourses sit in the Rankings Table by clicking on the Racecourse Rankings tab at the head of the Homepage.