Snow was still piled at the door but smiles abounded in the paper shop at Lambourn yesterday morning. The great news had just come through. “Racing tomorrow at Kempton,” the beaming woman behind the till said. “There's been such withdrawal symptoms here.”
Elsewhere on the High Street lay evidence of the malaise. Wellington boots filled the window display of the village stores, along with a poster headlined “Stuck In The Snow?” and offering 24-hour rescue. In a pub car park stood a vast and elaborate snowman, his head tilting drunkenly as he melted.
Lambourn is even introduced on its roadsigns as “Valley of the Racehorse”. Traditionally, it is to jump racing what Newmarket is to the Flat. This, though, is a small Berkshire village surrounded by downs. Its roads have not qualified for council gritting, so the freeze has tested the resolve of its inhabitants as seldom before.
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It is not just that 13 days have passed since the last jumps meeting. Others can hunker down and wait for the thaw but racehorses still have to be exercised, a daily routine increasingly hazardous when Lambourn and its 30-odd trainers have been virtually cut off.
Malcolm Bentick owns the saddlery, just off the village square. He has been here for 42 years and can recall nothing like it. “Stable staff have been in a lot buying things to keep warm when they're riding out - earmuffs, leggings and toewarmers have gone really well.”
In the office of the Racing Welfare charity, Sarah Hopkins offered another slant. “It's the retired and injured stable staff that worry us. They have been going stir crazy - no racing to watch and can't even get out to see their friends, the roads have been so lethal.”
That danger transformed the time-honoured morning scene of horses walking through this singular village. Nobody could risk valuable thoroughbreds on an ice-rink, so trainers have been loading them on to horseboxes for the precarious drive along narrow lanes to the gallops.
Doubtless, there have been tempers lost and voices raised but not, I fancy, by the sage that is Noel Chance. This twinkle-eyed Irishman has been in Lambourn for 15 years and is now in his fifth different yard - this time a rented base, with Portakabin office, on the hill out of the village.
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“This is the worst weather I've known since I was training on the Curragh 28 years ago when Mary, my wife, was expecting our first child. I finished working the horses one day, dropped into our local pub and found I couldn't get out again. It was a day and a half before I knew I was a father.”
Chance has prepared two Gold Cup winners - Mr Mulligan and Looks Like Trouble - in Lambourn stables. He has just 25 horses now and, when the new year snows struck, he had trained only one winner in the past ten months. Remarkably, he has since enjoyed three in ten days - one at the final turf meeting at Plumpton and two on all-weather tracks.
“We've not been able to do much fast work but as they've decided to start winning since the snows came, I must have been doing it all wrong before,” Chance said cheerfully.
Getting to the races, however, has been fraught. “The girl who was driving our horses to Southwell on Wednesday couldn't get into the village to get out again. When she did, Hungerford Hill was a big problem. I went in front of the lorry in a 4x4, ready to shift any stranded cars out of the way.
“We've all had to pull together in the village and there's a great community spirit. I've helped some Flat trainers who couldn't get out, boxing their horses to the gallops - and the Jockey Club team up there are so like-minded I know it wouldn't be a problem if I rang them at 6am and asked for a snow plough.
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“I've felt sorry for the young staff. I see them on horses at the top of the gallops, kids of 17 or 18, and they're like statues - snow blowing in their faces and a windchill of minus 9C. I remember days like that when I was a young apprentice. I always swore I'd go to Australia, but I never did.” As it slowly returns to normal business, Lambourn should be grateful for that.