BETWEEN 25,000 and 30,000 people are expected to flock to a famously friendly Cumbria racecourse for its last two fixtures of the season.

The summer bank holiday at Cartmel promises to provide fun for everyone involved, across both Saturday’s and Monday’s events.

The weekend will kick off with Saturday’s Cartmel Cup Day, a great opportunity for family fun but with plenty of chances for a flutter, organisers having had 142 entries for the day’s races.

On Monday, the final day of the season will see the staging of the highest class event run at Cartmel - the Bank Holiday Celebration Hurdle. The open handicap race attracts some of the country’s top jockeys and trainers as well as highly rated horses.

Yet even during the race season’s grand finale, the Cartmel ethos of providing fun for all continues, with families encouraged to picnic, barbeque and enjoy a traditional funfair.

Jonathan Garratt, managing director of the racecourse, said: “For most of our racegoers here at Cartmel the biggest feature is the social side, so the people they’ve come with and having a really good fun day out.

“There’ll be many, many people celebrating birthday‘s, wedding anniversaries, impending nuptials - no doubt on Saturday we’ll see one or two hen parties - so there’ll be a lot of people either celebrating landmarks in their own lives or even just celebrating life in general.

“We’re optimistic that we’ll have between 25,000 and 30,000 people over the two days so it’ll certainly be quite vibrant.”

Cartmel has become well known over the years for the fun extras that bring in visitors from far and wide, whether or not they consider themselves serious or serial racing enthusiasts.

Asked the secret to Cartmel’s special reputation, Mr Garratt said: “I think we’re very fortunate to have a racecourse which is in such a scenic and beautiful place, and that‘s part of it. 

“For more than 150 years, people have been coming to race meetings at Cartmel, probably driven by the lovely scenery. But the numbers in which they’ve come creates that lovely atmosphere, so it’s the racegoers themselves that make it. 

“It’s important, because it marks Cartmel out as having a very special quality that you won’t necessarily find at every racecourse you go to.”