There are things that are better to be seen once than told ten times. Grand National is definitely one of those. Grand National is an annual Horse Race that takes place since 1839 and considered as one of the most important horse racing events in the world. We went to the Liverpool area, more precisely to Aintree, to participate in this massive action accompanied by our friend, Keith Mercer, ex-jockey who used to ride here himself and even finished fifth several years ago. He was our official guide through the whole day.

Grand National consists of three days of competitions, and we chose the second one, which is called Ladies Day, for two reasons. The first one is that during this day, there are up to seven races, and not just one, and the second one was our insisting curiosity to find out what exactly Ladies Day meant. Now let us share with you all the striking observations we made.

Okay, the “Lady” part was cleared out immediately. Never in our life have we seen such quantity of fancy dressed women of various sizes, shapes, ages, colours, social backgrounds, but all of them were united by the same thing. High heels and excessive make up. That day made a record – nearly 50 000 people came to assist to the races, just imagine the tones of makeup used! What was even more striking, however, that…well… actually, it was quite cold. And even we are very far from being cold-sensitive (I remind you that we slept in a van by -21C), I would definitely not like to spend 7 hours having my boobs falling out the dress, when it was no more than with +10C. Pretty look is above anything. Some girls were dressed in such…provocative manner that we even didn’t dare to take pictures.

Something that surprised us a lot in England is the love of gambling. We got an impression, that everybody loves gambling whatever the subject is. Even in our tiny town Saltburn, there is a boutique of a bookmaker (which is the best boutique of the town, by the way). What can be said about such massive event? It was our first ever bet, and, I must admit, that was quite exciting! (Ha, the winning money 100% paid us the trip to Liverpool!)

Xavier is making the bet

Horseracing appeared to be a parallel world that has been existing quietly near ours, and about which we didn’t have any slightest idea. We even didn’t suspect how serious, expensive and tensed this industry was. Whatever might be said concerning animal violence, horseracing is an ancient tradition, and what we saw looked a lot like a vintage movie.

Hi there!

And Native River Wiiiiiiins!

I’m afraid to calculate how many tones of alcohol have been consumed during that day. Rivers of wine, seas of champagne and oceans of beer – it was absolutely incredible. It’s not difficult to imagine in which state the guests left Aintree. Stumbling, falling and crawling. We were even told that there was a big debate concerning the possible interdiction of taking photos of the “ladies” after the racing events – everybody wants to get dead drunk but no one wants to face the cruel reality shown on the pictures.

A bottle of champagne for the winners :)

Sophisticated English Ladies and Gentlemen? Aristocratic behaviour from Jane Austen’s novels? BBC-English language? Lol. Everything but this. Ladies day was the biggest live comedy we’ve ever assisted to, and unfortunately it was not very funny. After several hours high heels were left and forgotten – instead came ridiculous slippers, the dresses got covered with wine and beer spots, the ladies were sitting bare feet among the piles of used plastic glasses. Pathetic – is the only suitable word I can find to describe this happening. We were told that there are many people who actually save money during several months to afford attending Grand National. That means to buy a dress and to get drunk like a swine. Pathetic.

Anyway, Ladies Day impressed us so much, that we are looking forward to going there next year. Maybe, till then I’ll practice a bit in resisting the cold while being half-naked, we’ll see. :)

Enormous thanks to Keith for this marvellous week-end!

And to conclude this all, several shots of awesome men :)

From Aintree with love!