With glorious summer sunshine, the best weather on record for Ladies Day at Ripon was met by the biggest attendance at this increasingly popular society event at Yorkshire’s Garden Racecourse on Thursday 17 June.

Yorkshire ladies were out in style and giving the Ascot crowd a run for their money.

The worlds of fashion and horseracing combined on 22 June, for the ever-popular annual Newton Abbot Racecourse’s Ladies' Day.

Royal Windsor Racecourse hosted its first ever “Best of British Sausage Festival” on Monday 24th May with over 5,000 people enjoying a huge range of delicious sausages on the main paddock lawn.

Officials at Chester Racecourse were very pleased with the attendance at Roman Day on Saturday 22nd May, where crowds of over 24,000 enjoyed an exciting days racing in the sunshine for the new fixture.

The anticipation before this Gold Cup – unprecedented in recent years – reached a crescendo as a sustained media frenzy stoked the rivalry between the two previous Gold Cup winners trained by Paul Nicholls at Ditcheat. 

Words and pictures by Sara Waterson

An innovation this year was the Charity Ladies' Sweepstakes which closed proceedings on Ladies' Day. The aspiring jockeys pledged they would raise a minimum of £5000 for the day's official charity, Cancer Research UK, and there was fierce competition from the 136 applications for the final 12 places. Course Director Edward Gillespie admitted it had been a hard task to choose. See photos