Resource Magazine

We never used to be fans of Formula One here at Resource – a sport spending too much money on big boys’ toys and riddled with in-fighting and politics, as far as we were humbly concerned. Some of the team were living in Spain for a few years, watching the Fernando Alonso craze reach fever pitch. We still weren’t bothered. Until… enter stage left Lewis Hamilton: a beautiful boy with excellent manners and a skill of mind-boggling, fearless proportions. Not only can this boy drive, but his media presence is a rare thing indeed. Stopping politely for interviews and avoiding the back-stabbing methods of his former pocket-size team-mate, Hamilton is our new favourite sportsman. Even after being pipped to the post in last season’s competition (cue cries of ‘he was robbed’ by the Resource team), Hamilton is firmly back on track (so to speak) with a win at the first race of the new season in Melbourne. We’re very much looking forward to his cohesive overviews of his many winning races and just hoping he’s ditched those awful shiny suits. Come on Lewis!

With so many television programmes about wine and articles in the press by experts, you can know longer bluff your way to being a wine buff. One way of increasing your knowledge is to take a wine course – so as well as impressing your dinner party guests, you can also begin building a cellar of fine wines at home. If you’re interested in learning more, then Simon Chorley Art & Antiques are holding Wine Spirit Education Trust courses for all levels at their Prinknash salesroom this summer. Contact Simon Chorley via email, vs@simonchorley.com, or give them a call: 01452 344 499. Bottoms up!
Upcoming events at Simon Chorley: Thursday 10th April: Art & Antiques auction (Prinknash); Thursday 24th April: Collectors’ Sale (Prinknash); May 8th-11th: Art & Antiques Pavilion at Spring Gardening Show (Three Counties Showground, Malvern). The May 2nd Silver & Jewellery Valuation Day at Cheltenham Town Hall has been re-arranged for April 28th.

We never need an excuse to quaff Champagne and wear a fabulous outfit, but this week’s Cheltenham Festival certainly gives us a good reason. We hope you’ve already booked your room at Hotel du Vin, as this year’s four-day event will see the town expecting nearly a quarter of a million visitors who will be betting over £500 million on the 25 races taking place. No longer just about the horses or high stakes, the Cotswolds’ most elegant and affluent will be out in force. Expect a sea of glamour for Thursday’s Ladies Day, as the well-groomed compete for a very different kind of cup, with the Best Dressed Lady walking away with a four-star Ryanair European weekend away, £300 to spend in the Regent Arcade, and £300 of Molton Brown vouchers.
The event culminates in the world-renowned Cheltenham Gold Cup on Friday (which is sold out), with Kauto Star hoping to make the grade of this Blue Riband event. Call the box office for ticket availability: 01242 226 226.

The Resource editorial team is finally back on home soil, after some serious road-tripping through France and Spain in the comfort of a fabulous extras-stacked Land Rover Discovery (a full review of the vehicle and our Grand Tour will be online soon).
The plan, admittedly, was to post news stories every couple of days, but with infrequent access to free Wi-Fi (we’re sorry, but we absolutely refuse to pay for a service which is relatively inexpensive to install for hoteliers, especially the five-star big boys) we decided to take a much-needed break instead.
Highlights of our trip included a dazzling, slightly drunken eight-course dinner at Le Cinq in Paris’s deliciously decadent George V hotel; lunch sat on a windswept beach in Biarritz (we’re thinking we should invest in satellite offices in the upmarket town, with its Galeries-Lafeyette outpost and year-round populace of beautiful surfers); driving down the terrifyingly narrow streets of the ancient city of Segovia (and having to pull in our wing mirrors as our parking sensors went beserk); touring past the beautiful chateaux of south-western France; and eating roast lamb falling off the bone in Benahavis.
We’re feeling fully rested and raring to go, despite a few issues with email servers and having to move our editorial office upon our return (our head office address stays the same for now, if you’re planning on sending us gorgeous things to review!). We’ve had thousands of hits since our soft launch, and we’re hoping to dramatically increase that over the coming months, in the run-up to the first issue of Resource being available to Gloucestershire’s and The Cotswolds’ most affluent residents and visitors.
Please feel free to send us through any news items that you’d like us to consider, and if you need any more information about Resource, please do drop us a line.