Instead of offering cheese bites and pretzel sticks, residents of the county of Gloucestershire in southwest England thought up a more sporty and entertaining form of a cheese festival 200 years ago. A race: Cheese against man!

 

The venue for the unusual competition is the 45-degree Cooper's Hill on the outskirts of Gloucester. The race course is carefully prepared: The meadow is mowed, a protective fence is installed along the track and it is neatly cleared of stones or branches.

And the cheese is not just any cheese: The traditional Gloucester with its distinctive color has been produced since the 16th century.
Hand-scooped, aged for six to nine months and with a whopping 48 percent fat in the dry matter are the characteristics of the smooth yet pithy-buttery competitor.

The cheese is rolled down the slope in four laps. Since it can reach a speed of around 110 kilometers per hour and is given a bit of a head start over the athletes, it almost always shoots through the finish line first.
But that doesn't dampen the mood, especially since the fastest man and woman in each case are deemed the winners.