I wonder if it’s possible to get a price on the festival being cancelled. Talking to family in the area flooding is a major concern in the local area especially around the a40 m5 interchange there’s lots of water coming down the Severn from the hills on saturated ground. They are saying it’s as bad as 2007. Also a couple of weeks in the life of Coronavirus could see travel restrictions in and out of the country. With not a lot of racing going on I thought we’d have a conversation.
I state that with a major understanding of the current picture in terms of flooding in the area. I’ve been majorly involved in some of the planning and reacting to the incident. It’s very bad, in many places the levels have been greater than 2007. However if you ever wanted one racecourse and location to survive it, you would pick Cheltenham racecourse. Cheltenham itself has got of lightly compared to many parts of the area, the racecourse dries up very quickly and whilst we’ve had lots of rain, I’d expect that they could race tomorrow if needed. I could see a day being pulled for heavy winds/storm, but it would take something catastrophic for the current event to cause its cancellation.
Nass can you put some maps up of the local area and do yo have access to a fourteen day forecast. I see there’s more rain most of this week.
Cheltenham isn’t hit at the minute, if you look at googlemaps it’s basically the River Severn that is in full flood. The floodplain that is in full flood between Gloucester and Tewkesbury is about 5km wide in places!! The only roads impacted are the ones near the Severn, but as the floods move down the river the impacts will hit Tewkesbury and Gloucester later this week. The weather forecast systems are seeing a signal in the Atlantic for a storm at the weekend but so many uncertainties about the weather. Any rain will cause the Severn flood to be elongated because of the amount of rain this winter. Cheltenham is lucky in that it isn’t on the Severn and it’s rivers are coming from off the hills around the town, so whilst flash floods occur, long term flooding isn’t likely in the town or the main routes into it. very different to Tewkesbury!!
An area of concern is the a40 m5 intersection in Gloucester which could affect horse transportation from Ireland and the West Country. Also punters coming in from Bristol and Birmingham.
The only issue on the A40 is where it goes down to Chepstow from Gloucester, so anyone using the motorway network won’t have issues. People coming from Chepstow would just go further north.
Can't see it at all - Cheltenham being cancelled... I was in Cheltenham today at the railway station and Cheltenham is reasonably well protected from flooding. It's soft going there at the moment and I reckon the festival will start on soft going particularly with bits of rain forecast this week. If anything there might be some difficulty getting to Cheltenham racecourse depending where you are in Gloucestershire but once in Cheltenham you will have no problem. River levels set to peak on Thursday again but it's still 10 days from then until festival and a lot can happen in that time..
Bristol to Cheltenham will be pretty safe. I can even update you on Friday as I 'll be driving down to bristol from where I am which is pretty close to Cheltenham.
P.s I can even update you on Birmingham as at our Birmungham office tomorrow..going up on train and driving back..so you can have a full update! Lol. . Will be absolutely no problem..
Flooding won’t cancel Cheltenham - coronavirus might well though. it already looks like the six nations rugby will be affected - and it could well mushroom out of control in the next week or so.
Things seem to have really taken a negative turn, re COVID-19, these past 48 hrs. Think it might be foolish to spend much time studying the races, at the meet, too closely as things, unfortunately, don’t look great. Unless, of course, they went for a Festival 'behind closed doors'...