Royal Ascot 2008 - People Watching on Ladies Day

Your friendly neighborhood reporter and his loyal sidekick walked to High Street to see the sites. It was 'Ladies Day' at the races so we expected to see the ladies showing their stuff. (you know what I mean)

This is a compilation of the sights ...

Helicopters were one of the more interesting ways to get to the races. I counted 29 helicopters passing directly over our house to land about a block away in a cattle pasture. (highlight of the year for the cattle) This sign to the helipad was at the corner, by our house.

Another novel way to arrive was via horse drawn coach. As you can see, some had coachmen running along side to guide the horses, and some had coachmen on the back with herald horns playing songs to announce the arrival of the coaches.

Ascot added a couple of temporary pedestrian bridges to keep people from stopping traffic when crossing the street. It happened anyway ...

And let's not forget buses. Busses roared up and down our normally quiet little street all day, every day. Once the busses got to their parking lots, the riders would sit in the grass and eat and sip champagne until the races. See the champagne flutes?

Have you ever seen a horse ambulance? Neither had I. Of course in Ascot, it would be a Hummer.

And then there were the outfits. Everyone we saw was at least in 'Sunday dress', and at least half were in formal dress. And there were hats everywhere. I tried to take as many 'hat' pictures as possible without getting arrested for invading privacy. It was quite a site.

We were lucky enough to see one "substantial fascinator" (more on that in a later entry) - in the second picture she is not hiding her face, she is trying to keep it from blowing off. Take a close look ... it is a bathroom