WITH the sheep race meeting over for another year and schools all over the British Isles breaking up, Sark businesses are now preparing for what they hope will be a bumper influx of visitors who – because of the recession – are choosing to have their holidays closer to home.

THE amazing Sark Carnival team has done it again, raising an astonishing £43,000 in 2009 for the Professor Charles Saint Medical Trust. The total was revealed at last week’s cheque presentation evening at which a mushroom was auctioned for £500 to help kick-start this year’s fund-raising effort.

SARK’S annual Sheep Race organisers were left ruefully counting the cost of the old saying, ‘what a difference a day makes’, after last weekend’s weather.

I HAVE been asked by Rossford de Carteret, who seems to look upon raising money for the Professor Saint Medical Fund as a personal crusade, to remind people – and particularly the hundreds from Guernsey who support this charity so generously – that the annual sheep racing meeting is not far away.

GIVEN my origins, the last thing I want to do is to needlessly stick my neck out and start throwing my tuppence-worth into the minor local difficulties caused by the fishing dispute between Guernsey and Jersey.

Sark's Millennium Field might not be quite as grand as the refurbished Ascot, but it hosted a major race event on Saturday. Marion Falle reports. Pictures by Steve Sarre

They're not noted for their intellect, so how do you coax sheep into believing they are finely-honed racing machines? Zoe Ash got set for the Sark sheep races - and attempted to find out