To Chase a Cheese

This Monday, thousands of spectators will pack onto a crowded hillside to see people chase a wheel of cheese down Cooper’s Hill.

This is the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling Festival, perhaps one of the world’s strangest annual events.

On this edition of Saturdays Around the World, we head to Gloucester, England to check out the Cheese Rolling Festival.

Here’s the premise, a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese is sent rolling down a remarkably steep hill while a pack of (moderately insane) people go careening down after it.

If it sounds crazy, that’s because it really is.

Here are some cool creators we found, YouTube’s VagaBrothers, with the history, controversy, and lunacy of this event.

*note for sensitive ears, there are a few swear words in this video*

Can a cheese rolling festival bring us together?

The Cheese Rolling Festival has a great website with lots of information and pictures from the event. So, if you can’t make it there yourself, it’s a great site to check out!

Let’s take one more look at this festival from a more first-person perspective, not to mention get a look at the 15-time champion in action (he’s the guy explaining things and wearing a green shirt at the beginning of the first race). This video is from Maxdreamcreator!

Perhaps, on occasion, it’s the insane things in this world that make life a little more exciting. Is it the smartest thing in the world that people risk their necks chasing cheese down a hill? Probably not. Yet, the ridiculous nature of the event has captured the attention of the world.

It’s marvelous and strange that something like this could be a uniting factor for so many people around the globe, but isn’t that one of the most remarkable parts of living in an interconnected world?

Oh, and if you or a loved one do decide to go chasing cheese down a hill, remember, don’t blame that on us!

Stay beautiful & keep laughing!

-Liesl

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”-Victor Borge

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