For grassroots sport and gusto, go pointing

Of all the scenes in rural Britain, few have changed so little in the past century as the point-to-point. The pennants still fly above the white-railed paddocks and verdant brush and birch adorn the fences. The beer tent could come from the Lammas Fair in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, and the doughty trainers, owners and silk-clad jockeys from the pages of a Dick Francis novel. It is a scene that has kept — through changing times and lockdown — its innocence, colour and character in the landscape of the real countryside.

For more than 70 years, we held our local point-to-point at home in Devon on what was called the Racecourse Field. With three-mile races, originally partly over banks, it would, from my earliest memories in the 1960s, attract crowds of 3,000 and more. They’d be there for a day out, a flutter, a pint or two, and to cheer on their local hunter or smart challenger from an adjacent