‘CHEESE rolling’ participants in Gloucestershire are furious after discovering cheese can simply be purchased from a shop.
Locals gather annually at Cooper’s Hill, near Cheltenham, risking their lives to pursue a wheel of cheese down a near-vertical slope. To the best of their knowledge, this was the only way that good quality cheese could be acquired.
Lydney resident Roy Hobbs said: “I do the cheese rolling every year, not because I enjoy it or crave the status of winning, but because the only cheese they sell in my local shop – which to me was the same as ‘in the world’ – is Kraft slices.
“When you’ve had a year of Kraft slices, you’re prepared to risk breaking both ankles and several ribs for a taste of the good stuff.”
However Hobbs, who chooses to live his entire life within a half-mile radius of his front door, was left shocked when he used the internet at his local library and discovered cheese could be easily purchased online.
“The cheese comes to your house the very next day, in a van. You don’t have to run down a steep hill, run through Cheltenham naked under a full moon or wrestle a bull badger.
“Whoever is responsible for the cheese rolling, if indeed it is anything other that collective stupidity, has been lying to us. There probably aren’t bears in the Forest of Dean either.”
