14 April 2008 Essex - High Easter
Good Vintage: engaged in the Club Members
The 115-entry Essex meeting at High Easter on Saturday April 19 will inaugurate two exciting innovations.
A three and three-quarter mile Countryside Alliance Club Members Race which will be the longest event run in East Anglia for many a year will be staged for the first time, while the Ladies' Open for the famous Baileys Warwick Vase has been upgraded to the Area Feature Race status and boasts maximum prize money of £500.
The Club Members has 17 engaged including the Simon Andrews-trained pair of Briar's Mist and Good Vintage (both winners last time out) and the 2007 Hunter Chase winner, Tribal Run, not to mention two horses - Round The Isles and Sunyblaze - who shape like out-and-out stayers perfectly suited to this type of event.
Jilted Lover and Scare Lotte, each dual scorers already this season - though Scare Lotte was disqualified once - hold entries in both that stamina test and the Warwick Vase, where Limerick Leader is the pick of their 21 potential rivals.
The most exciting prospect on view could be The Piper's Son, who went in many notebooks when clocking the fastest time at Marks Tey on Easter Monday and is one of 20 possibles for the Intermediate Race.
The action gets under way at 2.00pm with a 10-entry Hunts Club Members and the last of six races, a 23-entry Open Maiden, is scheduled for a 4.55pm start.
High Easter is just south of the village of that name, eight miles north west of Chelmsford. From junction 8 of the M11 take the dual carriageway A120 east towards Colchester for roughly eight miles until the Dunmow South exit where you should follow signs for the A130 (direction Chelmsford).
You will soon arrive in Barnston and should turn right immediately at a mini roundabout signposted 'The Easters'. Follow this road all the way to High Easter where you turn right at a T junction. Stay on this road through the village and the course is about half a mile out the other side.
Admission will be charged at £10 per head with children under 16 free.
