Gone to the Dogs - Greyhound racing in Hove

So Saturday night we headed off to Hove (near Brighton) to go and watch (and place bets on) the Greyhound Racing, this was my second time so I kind of knew what to expect...They do this quite good deal (well, for me anyway) whereby you pay £12 entry and you get a form guide and a number of vouchers - one is like a lottery scratchcard, no idea what you can win but none of us did, one is a free £1 bet on either a 4-race or 6-race accumulator (I did a lucky dip and lost, but the odds are terrible), one is a voucher for dinner (which was pretty bad, I *think* they were trying to do tandoori, but they should have picked a bit of chicken with some meat on it) -

- and the last two get you free drinks at the bar (a pint of anything on tap or a soft drink), oh yes, and then you bet money on the races! We decided to bet £1 each per race...Flyingpops picked her dogs based purely on their names and went for "Place" bets which means the lucky dog can come in either first or second and you still win...I decided to pick the favorites (I'm not much of a gambler) and go for "Win" (which means they must come in first), and between us we cleaned up - either she or I had a winning ticket for every race! We came home just over £4 up, so if we had scaled that up and bet larger sums we could have come home considerably richer...but it's just not worth the risk if you ask me! ;) I think the whole evening wound up costing under £30 (for the pair of us) which isn't bad for a whole night's entertainment!

I did try to take a few shots of the dogs zooming around the track, but in the low light they just came out as streaks (or pitch black) because the use of flash photography is banned (for obvious reasons)...so it looks like you need a nice bright day to shoot anything that moves quite that quickly... ;)

Interestingly, this isn't the only way to approach the racing, you *can* book a nice table right by the window and go for the a la carte menu rather than the "chip van"-style "Next! Whacha want?" canteen, but then you might miss out on the amazing atmosphere down by the track (during the 10th race of the evening I saw people *still* tucking into their main courses)...it's a tricky one to call...might try it posh-style next time... ;)

It's excellent fun though, regardless...(but then, we didn't loose loads of money :)