Last weekend I ran the Goodwood Motor Circuit Marathon near Chichester, England.
The rain came down steadily in the latter stages, but it was a good day and a great weekend.
The Goodwood Estate — which has the independent, 91-room Goodwood Hotel and Goodwood House — has been the home of the dukes of Richmond since the very late 17th century. The grounds host events throughout the year, starting with horse racing in 1801 and top-level motor racing between 1948 and 1966.
Today it hosts motoring events such as antique fairs and care shows, antique car rallies and off-road driving excursions, as well as the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed and one of the horse-racing calendar’s most celebrated events, Glorious Goodwood, for rights reasons now called the Qatar Goodwood Festival.
Guests can even bring their own cars to race around the 3.8-kilometer track.
I know it is 3.8 kilometers a loop as we marathoners ran 11 of those as we drunk in the South Downs national park scenery and then drunk in some rain.
I stayed in a special little guest house the night before in the tiny, neighboring village of Halnaker, Sussex. The Old Store Guest House has seven rooms, only one of which was available when I booked, a tiny single room. That was perfect for me.
The Old Store Guest House opened as a hotel in July 2001. Its current owners — who met in the Alps while working in a ski resort — have been there since May 2022, and they chose its current name.
Built in 1795, it originally was part of Goodwood and began life as the village bakery. The original bread oven remains, and the former store now is the guest house’s breakfast room. Outside, there is a small garden with sun deck.
I tried to rack my small brain as to whether I have ever stayed in or indeed seen a single room in a hotel, and I am sure the answer is no.
Apart from a small handful of homes, the only other building in this hamlet is the very agreeable Anglesey Arms, where an excellent Somerset pork and fennel ravioli with brown butter and light pesto sauce was my dining choice.
After dinner, I was invited to sit at a table in the small saloon and got chatting with the locals, with three of them being ultramarathon runners. They were not running the next morning.
After the marathon and on the way home, the rain had changed into a deluge and was of such ferocity I decided to make a pit stop at Fauna Brewing & Taproom in Arundel, home to more aristocracy, the ducal family of Norfolk, even if this entire area is not in that country but in Sussex.
The brewery’s taproom and restaurant occupy the Old Engine Shed, the generator that once powered Arundel Castle, the Norfolk’s home.
A percentage of the brewery’s profits go to animal conservation projects both domestically and internationally. Its second location is in Chichester, less than 10 miles away. I was informed by its friendly staff that Fauna has opened its third outpost a 10-minute walk from my home in in Forest Hill, Southeast London, a property which has four hotel rooms, the only four in Forest Hill. CoStar classifies the Foresters Arms' rooms as upper midscale.
There was due to have been a Holiday Inn there, with 89 rooms, but the project was abandoned. There were some guestrooms in another pub, and until 2011 there was the aptly named Forest Hill Hotel, but that is now permanently closed, perhaps to be turned into residential homes.
So, good luck to the Fauna’s new Foresters’ Arms. I need to go. It is in a former pub that I have passed many, many times but never had the desire to enter.
At its Arundel outpost, I chose the African Wild Dog IPA and a mushroom and caramelized red-onion pizza, after first having a coffee to warm up.
A great trip of discovery and sore muscles, and more proof that hotels and hospitality are always a part of any good weekend.
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