Glorious Goodwood, the meeting that lives up to its name

Dust down the Panama, take an iron to the old linen suit and get ready for the most glorious summer party of the year: Goodwood is here.

Over the next five days a galaxy of racing stars will race on one of the most stunning stages in sport, running against a backdrop that might have been crafted by Constable, a landscape that drops unseen away from the track before reappearing in the distance in a watercolour of summer pastels: rolling green hills, thick dark forest, the rich yellow of ripening wheat. If heaven were a racecourse, this would be it.

If the natural scenery is glorious then so too is the man-made. Set amid the vast estate of Lord March, Goodwood racecourse feels lighter, more spacious and more special than most of its peers. It instills in racegoers the sort of glamorous languor that comes from the escapism of formal clothes and long summer days beneath blue skies without end – even if, in the true tradition of summer garden parties, a shower is never too far away.