We are quite lucky up here that the Scottish courses work together to provide a reasonably balanced programme. I know from chatting to an officail at Kelso that they try to co-ordinate with other jumps courses locally regarding race planning. It says a lot about the way racing is run though that thye invited the BHA to one of their planning meetings but the BHA declined.
Ayr
provides a steady fixture list keeping jumps from November to April and flat from May to October. A coupel more pre-Christmas jumps fixtures would be nice though.
Hamilton
operate from May to September and many of their dates are well established. Today’s fixture is well established since they dropped their early season dates.
Kelso
operate October to May and this works well. They watered this week and hints at the reason why they avoid summer jumping.
Musselburgh
are able to provide good ground in winter so they ‘jump’ from November to February and increasingly successfully in recent years. Flat goes from March to late October with a well balanced fixture list.
Some aren’t keen on summer ju8mping but it works well at
Perth
. They could in theory operate April/May then August/September, but the weather up here suits the summer programme. Most years you wouldn’t want to race at Perth before April or from October onwards because of teh weather.
Excuse the flag-waving but I think the local scene has a decent balance. Only a couple of clashes during the season and that can be down to local holidays.
Rob