Haydock Park Racecourse — Attraction in St Helens

Great day at the races with the family but.. PLEASE BEWARE OF THE SCAMMERS IN THE CAR PARK We recently attended a family day at haydock and all of our tribe had great fun. Along with all the excitement of the races, It was great value for money. We were able to take our own picnic to the family stand and kids admission was free. It was really easy to find with free on site parking. Overall a fantastic day and well worth the money.

Just one thing to beware of. As we parked up we were approached by a really friendly man claiming to be selling race cards/ programmes. After we handed him the money. He then entered into a fast paced blurb about working at a stable and having inside tips. Instead of a race card he tried giving us a paper envelope with a horse name stamped on it. Sounds silly, but our kids actually love to save the programmes of days out. Upon realising he wasnt an affiliated with the course, we declined his tip and asked for our money back. At this point the man started to take a more aggressive tone. Stating he didnt do refunds and that his tip would pay my wages. By pure chance a member of our party Googled the horse name and it wasn't even running. (It hadn't run since 2010). When presented with this info the coward set off across the car park at a pace that would have left the race horses for dust. Inside the course we spoke to another family who had met the same lowlife scumbag. We did speak to an official steward who advised that they are aware of deadbeats doing this but it was hard to prevent. This is understandable due to the size of the carpark and large volume of people arriving in a short time frame. Made even harder by the fact that the man looked like a regular punter (only slightly uglier). Hopefully karma will catch up with this plankton one day, but until then avoid him and make sure everyone you know is aware of this...

Having recently bought a small round of drinks at Haydock Racecourse, I have been forced to remortgage my house and sell all my possessions. I've been to London several times and yes, it's expensive, but London is London; a true cultural experience and reason to venture out of your comfort zone. This is, as its name suggests, Haydock. Spending £7 on a pint of lager isn't exactly on the bucket list, but then, it was my choice to drink lager. But let's say I chose the sensible option and drank soda water, that ought to ease the tension on the purse strings, right? Na! £4 for soda water. Four actual real pounds. Sterling, not Egyptian or Monopoly currency. Actual real cash. Its water with bubbles in. A friend of mine, well, acquaintance if we're being specific, bought a bottle of Prosecco; the cheap woman's champagne. Quite the budget drink in recent years. "Surely Prosecco isn't £35 a bottle!", I hear you query. Well, yes it is. I rarely drive to social events as in all truth I'm borderline alcoholic, but on this occasion I took the car and stuck to just the one pint. Lucky for my kids I took this option, as they'd have been forced to drink bathwater and eat every other Sunday until I recouped the likely month's salary it would have taken to get a few pints in. "Could take your own 'shorts'", I hear you suggest. Well, no. They've got that covered too, with tighter security than a Mexican border, ready to raid your personal belongings for 50ml of gin and completely put the dampeners on a proper British night out. To summarise; it's...

Haydock Park races yesterday from a food and drink perspective was very poor indeed.

The course itself and the quality of racing is fine but increasingly you are left with the feeling of being completely ripped off. Sky high prices for substandard product . 2 tiny cans (Dear God) of ‘wine’ and 2 pints of Guinness …£38 The Guinness was OK but at £7.50 a pint in obligatory plastic glass it ought to have been outstanding. The ‘wine’ at £9 a can was appalling …as close to undrinkable as you can get. Not all bad news though a bottle of Prosecco (circa £8 in any supermarket) was ‘on offer’ ..a mere £38 …down from the advertised price of £48 being charged the day before. Quality was fine but £28 would have been a sight more fair and still allowed the standard 300/400% mark up.

A ‘portion’ (half a bag of chips equivalent ) of frozen chips was available at the entirely unreasonable price of £5

The seating in the bar area of the Makerfield stand was less comfortable than a ‘shooting stick’ and the height of these unstable stools was a real challenge for anyone below 5’ 9”

Look, we kniw at these venues we are a captive audience and they have us by the balls but is it necessary to squeeze this hard ? I’ve been to Thirsk, Beverley and Stratford races fairly recently and obviously been charged significantly higher prices than I would pay in a pub, I understand and accept that but Haydock was on a whole different level. I live local to Haydock Park and this was my first visit for several years and I have to say it’s likely...