Eh hello Queenie! Not quite..... After much stress about what to wear (the strict dress requirements meant there was a lot of planning in place) we finally got glammed up and headed to Ascot!The crowds were amazing.... thousands and thousands of generally really well dressed people! There were some absolutely gorgeous outfits and some horrific concoctions that were not meeting queenies standards at all!
At 2pm the Royal Procession came down the mile and into the winners circle, we got prime seats to wait and see queenie - she is looking pretty good, plenty of ruling years left in her I think! It started to rain so she was only out briefly and then she headed to her private box in the royal enclosure.... bugger we were definitely going to offer her a drink if she came to sit with us for the race!
So we got some lunch organised which was horrendously priced - worked out about $30 NZ dollars for a sandwich and piece of lettuce, but we were hungry so we paid it! We were going pretty easy on the Champagne to begin with as £8 ($25 NZD) per glass was making it an expensive treat.... the Pimms however at £18 for a jug (many many glasses) was much more of a bargain!
We started a small syndicate and were betting on a couple of horses to place in each race - I am an amateur better when it comes to the horses but the nice man at the TAB equivalent was very helpful and quite keen to take my money (funny that)! Anyway we won some, lost some... small bets so quite small returns.... but that Shane was being a bit sneaky! He put on a couple of bets ' On the Nose' for particular horses to win and htey bloody came in! We walked away with over £200 in winnings from our little dabble! The race would finish and Vickie and I would be happy that we returned £5 and they Shane would pull out a slip for a £100 return - talk about the excitement!
Once the racing was over we headed to the band stand - a rather kooky tradition is that after the racing you gather at the band stand for a sing a long! So with songs like 'Rule Britannia' and 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' it was all very english!!! Fun though... we then met up with Linda & Warren and headed towards the train, we detoured slightly to a pub for 'a drink'.... 4 hours later it was time to really catch the train so we stumbled to the train station and headed home!
Was a fantastic day at the nags!
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