Your first raceday
If you’ve never been racing, start with our first raceday guide: how tickets and enclosures work, what to wear, how betting works (and that you don’t have to bet), and what happens through the day.
Last reviewed: 4 October 2026
Who we are
Planning help for a day at the races
Off to the Races is a free guide to visiting all 61 racecourses in Britain and Northern Ireland. For each course we cover the meetings and ticket prices, every enclosure, how to get there, where to stay and eat, what to do nearby, families, accessibility and what to expect on the day.
It’s published by Does Your Duck Quack?, which runs a small family of independent guide websites. We aren’t connected to any racecourse, the Jockey Club, Arena Racing Company or the British Horseracing Authority, and no racecourse pays to appear or approves what we write.
Who it’s for
First-timers and regulars alike
Choosing an enclosure
Every racecourse has a side-by-side comparison of its enclosures, with prices, views, food, dress codes and entrances, plus a full guide to each one.
Families and access
Each guide sets out the rules for children, and there are dedicated accessibility pages for the courses that publish detailed access information.
Making a weekend of it
Named hotels, pubs and restaurants near every course, and things to do in the area, so you can turn a raceday into a short break.
How we work
Checked, dated and sourced
We take prices, times and rules from each racecourse’s own website wherever possible, date every guide, and say plainly when something hasn’t been published yet. Read more about how we check our facts.
How we’re funded
Free to use
The guide is free. We are a Booking.com affiliate through Commission Junction (CJ), and hotel links may earn us a commission if you book, at no extra cost to you. That never decides what we recommend. See our privacy notice for what this means for your data.
Get in touch
Contact us
Email webmaster@offtotheraces.co.uk, or write to Does Your Duck Quack?, 5 South Charlotte Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4AN.
We can’t help with tickets, refunds or anything that happened on a raceday: please contact the racecourse directly. Each guide links to its official contact page.