There are hills, swoops, hidden dips, and not one home turn but two. It’s as if the Goodwood course designer, back in the early 1800s, abandoned his task leaving behind just… a twisted paperclip! But come here on a sunny afternoon, see the horses gather, and – like the sun – you just want to beam.

They say Royal Ascot is racing’s Olympics. Well, the Qatar Goodwood Festival is the after party. Five days of joyous horseracing when all Ascot’s black-coated, top-hatted, wrinkle-browed endeavour is replaced with linen and lightness.

There’s a quintessential English phrase to describe Goodwood and it is: ‘quintessentially English’. If Alice had discovered a racecourse when she followed the White Rabbit into Wonderland, it would have been Goodwood. Glorious, goofy Goodwood. And the Mad-Hatter? He’d have been wearing a panama…