Some say that it’s a ritual as old as time itself, while others say it harkens back nearly two-hundred years, and still others say it’s as old as, well, that odd smell in your refrigerator.
No one can say with any certainty when the famous Cheese Rolling at Coopers Hill in the UK started, but one thing is for sure, despite a first-time, law-enforced ban of the famous downhill foot race for fromage, no one can rightly say when it’s going to end either.
Love it, leave it, cheese it, it’s a rite of foolish passage that is equal to the Pamplona bull run, with all of the bravado, but without the goring.
The Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake (don’t worry, not nearly as depressing as it sounds) is an annual event held by the villagers of the otherwise sleepy town of Brockworth that had gotten a little too big for local officials to contend with. With the Cheese Roll gaining in international acclaim and the ranks of potential competitors swelling, they simply canceled the event going so far as cordoning of the hill and the surrounding areas.
But you can’t keep a good round of Double Gloucester down … Or rather, you can, but only after it’s fulfilled it’s purpose in live and rolled down the steep Coopers Hill at speeds of up to 70 mph.