Another year, and another serious amount of miles covered travelling up and down the country visiting Britain's racecourses. Now we're just a few miles short of 29,000. We could have circumvented Earth, and driven over an eighth of the way to the moon. With twenty-five racecourses visited in 2024 (some of them more than once), that's not a bad feat considering we've both been in hospital for operations this year and needed time away from racing to recover. Plus Cheg has had more holidays this year than Judith Chalmers. But despite that, we're now only nineteen racecourses away from having visited every British racecourse at least twice. No other racecourse review website can say that. We've even managed three stable visits.
We've seen improvements to many racecourses on our return visits. We've also seen admin fees on advance tickets dropped, price freezes on admission prices, website amendments, and more consistency across concessions offered to seniors. Some of these are a direct result of this racecourse review website and all are a benefit to the racegoer.
Most racecourses have been receptive to our honest reviews of our visits to their racecourses. However, there are still some who, for whatever reason, choose to not even acknowledge receipt of the review (perhaps we should name and shame them?). We've also received emails from readers of our website, where our review of a particular racecourse has helped them in some small way - one was even from America!
In 2025 we hope to be returning to all five Scottish racecourses, and we may have to twist the arms of our better halves to let us stay overnight, as we're planning to embark on two 2blokes on tour trips this year. We will also be returning to some of the racecourses at the bottom end of our rating table to reassess whether their position in the table is warranted. Sometimes it may be that we just caught that racecourse on a bad day, it happens. We like to think we're fair. For instance, Ayr Racecourse...surely it shouldn't be bottom of our ratings table? We'll see later in the year when we go back. But we really do have some fabulous racecourses. Even those at the bottom of our ratings table have good points.
Highlights of the year include our return visit to York Racecourse, with our missuses, for the Dante meeting in May, and to Aintree for the Grand National meeting where we got to walk the course. In July we were also honoured to be asked to present a trophy to the connections of one of the winning horses at Lingfield Park Racecourse - the second time we've presented a trophy now. It was also great to meet legendary horse-racing commentator, Jerry Hannon, and his mates...twice. And a great bunch of lads they are too. My own highlight was our chat, and photo, with the DHT (Delightful Hayley Turner) at Wetherby Racecourse in early June, and of course, with Adele Mulrennan at Thirsk Racecourse in early July. Ahhh, what more can I say...🥰. As if we don't already like Yorkshire Racecourses enough as it is! Photos of all of these can be seen in the Gallery. Anyway, enough of the swooning, now the serious bit.
Which racecourse deserves a gold star and tops our ratings table, and which racecourse could do with a visit by Nick Knowles and his DIY SOS team? Below we give you our overall Top Ten-rated British racecourses, along with our Top Ten-rated smaller British racecourses. These are also available to see on our Instagram posts - just click on the small pink tab at the bottom of this page.
The table for all sixty British racecourses, based on our ratings in 2024, will be coming shortly so look out for that. We're hoping to update this table more frequently in 2025 thus making it more 'current' so that any improvement (or decline) at that racecourse has an immediate effect on its position in the table.
We'd like to finish by thanking you for your support of our little website, and here's to another year of fantastic racing.
York
Beverley
Aintree
Newmarket
(July Course)
Cheltenham
Ascot
Hamilton
Sandown
Chester
Ripon
Beverley
Hamilton
Ripon
Fakenham
Wetherby
Carlisle
Plumpton
Salisbury
Musselburgh
Newton Abbot
Best All-Weather Racecourse - Chelmsford City
Best Scottish Racecourse - Hamilton Park
Best Welsh Racecourse - Bangor-on-Dee
Cheapest Pint - Fakenham
Best Fish and Chips - Fakenham
Best Choice of Food - York / Fakenham