Cheese Chasing

What: Cheese Chas­ing, or the Coop­er Hills cheese roll, is the best of eccen­tric British fes­ti­vals, where com­peti­tors race down one of England’s steep­est hill in pur­suit of cap­tur­ing a 10kg Glouces­ter­shire cheese wheel – which also hap­pens to be sent rolling down the hill !

Believed to have begun some­time in the 1800’s, the fes­ti­val begins around 12pm on the late may bank hol­i­day and see’s a vari­ety of cat­e­go­ry races all fol­low­ing the sin­gle aim of being first to the bot­tom of the steep hill to win the cheese. Presided over by a mas­ter of cheese cer­e­monies who starts each race with “One to be ready, two to be steady, three to pre­pare and four to be off” the fes­ti­val is not with­out risk, with bro­ken bones and scrapes to com­peti­tors and injuries to spec­ta­tors caused by run-away cheese’s expect­ed.

When:  The cheese chas­ing fes­ti­val takes place on the late spring bank hol­i­day in the UK, which is nor­mal­ly towards the end of May.

Where: Cheese chas­ing takes place on cooper’s hill in the vil­lage of brock­worth in Glouces­ter­shire, giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the event the best option is to go by car, look for a des­ig­nat­ed cheese chas­ing car park near­by and walk on foot to the hill.

Dura­tion: The offi­cial races last a mat­ter of sec­onds, with the offi­cial race sched­ule look­ing as:

Men’s Down­hill Race – 12 and 12:15pm

Uphill Race – 12:30, 12:45 and 1:15pm

Women’s Down­hill Race – 1pm

Final Men’s Down­hill Race – 1:30pm

How­ev­er due to the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the event a series of addi­tion­al races to let addi­tion­al par­tic­i­pants try their luck down the hill take place (known as the race of the idiots), with the ‘idiots’ being met by the local rug­by team to soft­en their land­ing.

Tick­ets: Cheese chas­ing is free and takes place at your own risk, dona­tions to the com­mu­ni­ty are wel­come and expect to pay a small park­ing fee if arriv­ing by Car.

Need to Know: The van­tage points on the side of coop­ers hill to watch the cheese chas­ing are lim­it­ed, so it’s advised to arrive a cou­ple of hours before the chase, with a good sup­ply of food and warm clothes due to the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of the Eng­lish weath­er.

More Infor­ma­tion: The offi­cial news­pa­per of Glouces­ter­shire con­tains infor­ma­tion about the exact dates of cheese chas­ing and oth­er local sights to check out which attend­ing cheese chas­ing  https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/