A THOUSAND-mile journey starts with a single step, as the meme goes, a relevant Instagram post for a racing fan as the countdown to Cheltenham is initiated. While the destination is clear, where does the punters’ silk road start?

Like the ancient traders heading to far frontiers, the intrepid punter must go on a journey, to gather all of the most precious and rare gems, first hand. So when the time comes, the punter can strike with the purest of rare stones gleaming, ready to trump the paltry offerings of the guessers and podcasters operating on whispers, and second-hand goods.

The miles accumulated on the highways and boreens will equip you, dear reader, with all of the information required to identify these guessers. Feel free to eye-roll and sarcastically tweet at the under-informed and overfed Cheltenham preview panel members, slow-clapping as they tell you Envoi Allen has a “great chance, but Willie’s will come on for the run”.

They will dismiss Carefully Selected’s first run of the season, but you were there, saw him, the size of a house, the coat of a winter lion, the belly of a seasoned barfly. And he blew afterwards like the wolf after the little pigs, but he won, and you were there.

These are the crucial nuggets of gained on the information superhighway known as the Road to Cheltenham (© Lydia Hislop).

The accumulation of empty water bottles, deli counter crumbs and a blizzard of diesel receipts alongside rocketing blood pressure and cholesterol are a small price to pay for the inevitable riches that will bestow us kings (and queens) of the road come Friday the 13th of March. Luckily, horse racing bettors are famously non-superstitious.

The Road to Cheltenham (all royalties due to a Ms Hislop, Lydia) has many pitstops along the route to the promised land. It is a spiritual experience, Ramadan has fasting and prayer we’re praying to find something fast. Depending on one’s world view and potential commercial opportunities, it is a little muddy as to when the journey actually starts.

As any non-Cheltenham racecourse manager will tell you, their festival stands on its own two feet.

“This (insert any meeting between October and February) is not a trial for Cheltenham.

“This is a festival in its own right.

“Well, if horses that run here happens to do well at the Cheltenham Festival well that is just a compliment to the quality of racing here.

“That race is not a prep for Prestbury Park … but I am thankful that there is sufficient recovery time for horses to run here and also there.

“No, not because I’m worried about how that would affect our entries, just so all of these standalone meetings get the chance to showcase themselves.

“In their own right. Not as Cheltenham trials.

“How do we judge the quality of our festival? Well, every year for the last five at least three Cheltenham winners have come from this meeting.|”

Highway to heaven

Fairyhouse is one of the first essential ports of call for those hitting the highway to heaven, again not a trial but a quality weekend of racing that has consistently produced Festival winners.

Some could argue the Charlie Hall, or even the Thomas Pink, slash Murphys, slash Paddy Power, slash Bet Victor Open Meeting, but that’s practically still the flat season. Fast work on grass? Willie’s are still full of summer grass at that time of the year.

The Bar One Racing Winter Festival in association with Bar One Racing and with special thanks to Barney O’Hare features some brilliant racing, kindly sponsored by Bar One. Once you ignore the Betfair Chase, like most Irish trainers do, Down Royal, like the green brigade do, or the Morgiana, like pretty much everyone does, it’s the first Grade 1 racing of the year “proper.”

An accurate gauge of the importance of a race meeting can be worked out by the ratio of general public to bookmakers’ PR folk. Fairyhouse is littered with reps, you can’t move without being handed an ante-post betting update, a sure sign the journey to the Promised Land is underway. Nearly used the term ‘Road to Cheltenham’ but after two mentions it incurs a royalty fee to Lydia Hislop. (Ah f*** that’s three, send on your BIC and IBAN Lyds.x)

While every novice hurdle and bumper winner from Galway onwards actually gets quoted for Cheltenham, as confirmed by all 40 bookie reps at the Drinmore, it’s only in December that these begin to bear substance.

Feel free to remind any after-timing mugs of this when they claim to have gotten 40s about Faugheen for the Marsh, when he was still a single figure price for the Stayers’. “What’s the Marsh?” you ask. It used to be the JLT, the new JLT, not the handicap one, the baby Ryanair.

Impossible

Our winding path through Christmas goes to Leopardstown, Limerick and Kempton. Cards on the table here, attending all three is impossible. So time to give the car a break, with five Grade 1s on the 26th really you are going nowhere.

So arise from a turkey-induced coma early-ish to load up on a few shorties at the gaff tracks. A Wolverhampton, Wetherby, Sedgefield and Wincanton Lucky is a personal favourite, while watching the actual good racing from the comforts of the couch on a diet of chocolate and antacids. If the Lucky actually clicks, it will provide boss-level punting pub talk.

Taking notes is crucial, Rain Man couldn’t follow all the action on the day of St Stephen (patron saint of boxing and wrens). Those notes will be essential for watercooler bluffing around the office in late February, also handy for Cheltenham preview nights to help spot the absolute charlatans on the panel.

Technically you have not moved and gone to the track, but there should be bonus points for enduring the Christmas racing through ITV, Racing TV isn’t perfect but the non-stop action cuts down on needing to listen to Ed and AP’s bantaaah.

Maybe ITV were hoping for Racing’s Ant and Dec, given the pair are friends. The broadcaster got the same value as J.P. did that time A.P. told him Buveur d’Air should go over fences.

The latter part of Christmas should definitely be spent at Leopardstown, far more clues for Cheltenham and fun to observe the return of the boom. Corporate boxes packed out, lots of champagne sold, the Blackrock College alumni even had a runner. The track was even a boom time throwback with the surface more like the dance floor in Club 92.

The dawn of the new year probably had armchair racing fans giving out about race clashes, just the six meetings across Racing TV, not ideal for a hangover.

The tonic of the day was the Gold Cup winner pitching up at Tramore rewarding those who made the trip, especially Willie Mullins. The question for the intrepid race fan, is a trip to Tramore now an integral part of the Road to Cheltenham (the cheque is in the post Lydia)?

The answer is a resounding yes, because it is a crucial step to becoming a horse racing hipster. They have wood-fired pizza there you know. Sure the manager wears a fancy peaky blinder hat and you get to see the Gold Cup winner canter around. If Condé Nast did a hotlist of places you never thought you should go, but just HAVE to visit, for racetracks, Tramore would be on the list. And sure it’s got a beach, do some surfing too, warm back up with a flat white and some avocado toast. Tramore, horse racing hipster heaven. Go before it’s not cool anymore.

After Tramore, it’s on to Naas for the Lawlor’s Day. Everybody seems to love Naas, “great track” says anyone that has ever walked through the gates since that day Arkle ran there in the 60s.

The new Arkle or at least this year’s iteration kept the hype train on the rails and the Irish banker is clearly identified. Irish Banker? No, no, not the lads you saw drinking champagne out of the plastic glasses at Leopardstown a week before, Envoi Allen, our Lord and saviour.

The long January seems to be just a to-and-fro from Punchestown to Fairyhouse and back for most of the month until it happens. Probably the most important race in the calendar for hurling folk and National Hunt breeders.

The race that stops a county, the Goffs Thyestes at Gowran. Never mind the county, it’s a race that every trainer in the country would want on his CV. And there’s no problem attracting a big crowd here. Presenting Percy tends to be the star attraction, the media-averse trainer a hero to the cute hoors in the crowd.

The race known as the Kinloch Brae at Thurles less than a week before has featured Gold Cup winners and Newmill winning in the last 15 years, but the Goffs Thyestes has given us two Grand National winners in Numbersixvalverde and Hedgehunter, and the latter joins other recent winners in On His Own and Djakadam with valiant second-place efforts in the Gold Cup. Thyestes still has a mysticism unmatched by most rural racedays.

After Gowran, the next big day out is the Dublin Racing Festival at the Foxrock venue. The Dublin Racing Festival, one of the original standalone, not a prep for the Cheltenham Festival, festivals. The perfect five-and-a-half week recovery time for horses to run at Leopardstown and Cheltenham is nothing but a coincidence.

Two days of top-class National Hunt racing at the best racecourse in Ireland, with the only abstentees being English runners, channelling the best of Brexit Britain, the reasons for such absenteeism available to read in their exclusive bookmaker blogs.

The Dublin Racing Festival signals the imminent end of the Road to Cheltenham (ok, ok Lydia, I’m good for it, sending bailiffs was a bit much).

It was hard enough to get horses to run during the season proper, only those too well-handicapped will be seen in the intervening five weeks.

This pre-festival no-man’s-land is filled with the Festival preview season proper. Due to the proliferation of podcasts some feared the humble preview night may be waning, but never underestimate the hunger of racing professionals (and charlatans) for nixers.

As sure as there’s a battle on for fifth and sixth place in Pertemps Qualifiers, there will be preview nights.

This month long hot-take battle could help with the climate crisis, surely this volume of hot air and hot takes could be repurposed for good. The key to surviving these four weeks is just like one of Willie’s when they hit the hill, the early season slow slog in deep ground gives the punter strength. The reward for the motorway miles is that precious information, first hand.

So when the panelist couches their language about a horse’s first run of the season, the king of the Road to Cheltenham (I’m filing for bankruptcy Lydia) drops a bucket into his deep memory well and recalls.

“Bloody sure they weren’t happy with the ride the first day.

“I saw the trainer bollocking the jockey, sure I heard him.

“There were only 40 people in the place, sure everyone heard.”

This hard road leaves it mark on those who travel it, with the survivors akin to Vietnam vets screaming at the hippie protesters: “You don’t know, maaan, you weren’t there.”