Racecourse diet

I went to Cheltenham racecourse on Saturday.

There are several reasons for going to Cheltenham to the races. One, it’s a day out. Two, at this time of year, if lucky, then the drive that I take across the Cotswolds can be a spectacular scene of autumn colours. Third, I usually meet up with friends and the racing gives us that excuse. Fourth, I sometimes see some birds. Good food is never the reason for going – except when there is a picnic in the car park and that is not a sensible plan in the winter months.

Obviously, it was a day out – that was a certainty.

The autumn colours were lovely. I was lucky that soon after entering Gloucestershire from Oxon (on the road from Chipping Norton to Stow, and on the road down towards Adlestrop) not only did the sun come out but the Beech leaves were at their coppery best – and mostly on the trees although many were looking good on the forest floor too. If the light had been different, or the wind in the last few days had been stronger, it would have been less wonderful – but life is a punt!

On Saturday, my regular racecourse companions were doing military service (of a sort) so the third reason was void – but you can’t win them all.

After racing, we paused to look for owls and anything else that might be passing. We were lucky (and there wasn’t much skill in it) to see Barn Owl very close and a couple of Short-eared Owls. Seeing owls at this site is a shade of odds on I would say, but sometimes the views are better than others. Well worth the stop, where we had coffee from a flask and some chocolate. At this site I’ve seen Great Grey Shrike often in the past, Hen Harrier once, Peregrine once and there are usually Yellowhammers calling as they go to roost, and always far too many Pheasants.

But at the racecourse I saw something I had never seen before (and my third Cormorant record from the racecourse in over 70 visits) and that was this Fuorvito pizza van – click here.

Now there is a regular pizza vendor at the racecourse but this was a new one, in a new place, and I looked at the menu and saw a word that I don’t believe I have ever seen at Cheltenham races before: vegan. That’s an outsider.

In fact, the pizza menu was half vegetarian, a quarter vegan and a quarter carnivore. That’s unusual. Even more unusual was the fact that the vegan pizza was significantly cheaper than the other options – almost unheard of in my experience.

I chatted to the team there for a while and giggled slightly that one of the vegetarian options appears to be named after a bunting which is a prized autumn meal for French gormets such as the late President Mitterand, but I now realise that ortolana means market gardener or greengrocer in Italian – I hadn’t realised that.

Anyway, the vegan pizza was cheap, cheerful and delicious. This outsider may end up as a favourite in future.

I didn’t see any other vegan options at the racecourse, but then I wasn’t looking that diligently (just keeping my eyes open) but there were other vegetarian options and I’m sure there are a lot more than there would have been when I first saw a Cormorant from the racecourse.

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