Some of you may have noticed the addition of our Cheese Roll over on our right sidebar. For the purposes of WWFC, we  thought that Cheese Roll works so much better than the default Blog Roll. Our list is small, but we hope to grow it and add to the list of awesome blogs we’ve found (and who’ve found us) so far.

Coincidentally, while scanning the headlines this week, I came across this:

Gloucestershire cheese-rolling canceled due to safety fears

What? Any headline that has the words ‘cheese’ and ‘canceled’ must be scrutinized!

I found out that every spring, at Cooper’s Hill, near Gloucester, a round of Double Gloucester is tossed down the hill, and people chase after it! The hill is steep, and the cheese just bounds along down the hill. Behind it, hordes of dedicated cheese-loving fiends chase it.  The winner keeps the cheese.

And the event has been canceled this year!

Due to the steepness of the hill, and the long grass, it’s hard to see the concavity of the hill from the top. Running into that portion of the hill has been described as falling off a cliff, so the potential for injury is huge. In past years, they’ve actually run out of ambulances. Cheese Runners routinely break bones, suffer concussions, and sprain their ankles.

And they do it all for cheese!

But that’s not why the event is being canceled. The event is being canceled because it’s become too popular. In fact 15,000 people attended last year’s event. The problem is that the site’s insurance will only cover about a third of that, so clearly, they’re way over capacity.

Funny. For a minute there I thought the authorities had gotten infected with Nanny State Syndrome or something. We say, if you want to break a leg chasing a round of cheese down a hill, go for it! Anything involving cheese is alright by us.

They’re hoping to move the event to a new location for 2011, the first time the event’s been moved in over 200 years.

Enjoy the visuals. Words cannot describe the insanity:

P.S. Gloucester is in the Cotswold region of England. Jayne, if you’re reading you may know something about that

Tags: cheese rolling, cooper, double gloucester, gloucestershire, hill, injuries, insane