The Gold Hill Cheese Race

The Gold Hill Cheese Race in Shaftesbury, a relatively recent invention from 2012 (which in English tradition comfortably qualifies as “ancient”), is the sort of event that makes you wonder at what precise moment someone looked at a punishingly steep cobbled street and thought, “You know what this needs? Speed. And dairy.” Each year, up to a hundred willing participants gather at the foot of the famously vertiginous incline, better known to the wider world as Hovis Hill, thanks to a nostalgically wheezy 1970s television advert and prepare to hurl themselves upward in a display of determination, optimism, and questionable judgment. Now, Gold Hill is not long. At 541 feet, you could stroll it in a minute or two if it weren’t trying quite so hard to repel you. But what it lacks in length it more than compensates for in hostility: a 17% gradient, a surface composed entirely of cobbles apparently selected for their slipperiness, and because simply getting up the thing isn’t sufficiently disagreeable, the added joy of carrying weight while doing so. The result is less a race and more a prolonged negotiation with gravity, in which the hill generally wins. It is, in short, not an undertaking for the faint-hearted, the weak-kneed, or anyone with a sensible appreciation for comfort. Which, of course, is precisely why people keep turning up to do it.