The top trainer's newly updated festival survival guide

It all began so well. It was a sunny late morning on the Lambourn Downs when Corky Browne, Nicky Henderson's loyal head man, glanced out of the rear window of the 4x4 and said quietly: “Now that's a lovely view for you.”

The rest of us followed his gaze, our eyes lighting on a herd of fallow deer grazing peacefully some 100 yards from the main gallop, like a scene from the 2017 Countryfile calendar, and we marvelled at the Arcadian bliss of it all. That was our first mistake.

In a fateful instant, the deer – 40 or so of them, perhaps startled by some sound audible only to the cervine ear, perhaps just enjoying a deer-centric joke at our expense – looked up from their grassy idyll, pricked their ears by way of short-lived warning and ran en masse, as deer are wont to do, exhibiting remarkable powers of acceleration but scant regard for direction.