'A delicious chance to step back in time and bask in the best of Britain': An insider's guide to The Season

As the sun cools on another Royal Ascot day during that hazy week in June, a serene creature emerges from amid the sea of redundant betting slips, discarded glasses and stumbling racegoers fumbling for an Uber: the Season insider.

Effortlessly stylish, on the money and primed for their next social fix, their race card is intact and masterfully thumbed, wallet fuller than on arrival, feet blister free and driver waiting. For the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, securing a pass for Car Park Number 1 nearest the entrance is the golden ticket, but there are other secrets to serenity, too. ‘Get invited into a box if you can and, failing that, to the Buck’s Club or White’s tents for lunch and tea,’ insists Martha, Lady Sitwell. ‘I’ve never understood people’s enthusiasm for a picnic in a car park, it takes hearty English eccentricity a step too far in my view. But if you must, for heaven’s sake hire a pretty vintage car and a godchild to do the packing, driving and serving, so you can enjoy yourself.’

Victoria Fellowes, wife of multiple-Royal Ascot-winning trainer Charlie, is a car-park picnic aficionado. ‘Charlie Fellowes Racing and Fitzdares always pull it out the bag. We’ve had caviar on Pringles and no plastic glasses in sight,’ she reports. For her, the trick is to keep back supplies for after racing, when things kick off in the car parks with dancing until dusk, DJ decks appearing from car boots. ‘It’s everything that’s great about this country, Champagne, strawberries, the Royal Family, being outdoors and friends,’ adds Mrs Fellowes. ‘A British summer wouldn’t be the same without it.’

Peppered throughout those hazy days between May and August, the Season was once a time when country houses were left behind in favour of London Society until the Glorious Twelfth and the grouse moor — and of which Oscar Wilde lamented: ‘People are either hunting for husbands or hiding from them.’ It now encompasses a heady itinerary of the Arts, sporting fixtures and pageantry that stretches beyond the capital until the tail end of the summer. It’s about flitting from the Proms and the Queen’s Club Championships in London to the Epsom Derby and Glorious Goodwood beyond. Yet not all cream-drenched strawberries are as sweet as each other, not all Champagne as thirst quenching: there’s doing the Season and then there’s doing the Season.

At Badminton Horse Trials in Gloucestershire at the beginning of May, savvy insiders bag tickets for lunch in the Members’ Enclosure on the south side of the main arena, rustled up by Cirencester caterer Relish, says Tetbury local Laura Hall-Wilson, who, with her husband, Tom, is behind the kilim brand Nomad Ideas. ‘It’s an oasis away from the crowds, but right in the centre of the site. Buy tickets early — they get snapped up,’ Mrs Hall-Wilson warns. ‘We think stay mobile until later in the afternoon on cross-country day. The lake is the obvious place [to watch the riders], but it’s very busy. If you walk even some of the course, you will get closer to the equine stars and see more of the world-class action.’

Lunch for Andrew Ward, a steward for 25 years, ‘has to be a picnic with claret, rare-beef sandwiches and lots of family and friends’. For dinner on the Saturday evening, Mr Ward, for whom Badminton serves as his annual occasion to dig out his father’s Stetson bowler, makes a beeline for The Holford Arms at Knockdown, where ‘all the talk at the bar will be of horses, riders, jumps, successes, failures and Sunday’s jumping test’. Eventing devotees set their alarms in time for the final horse inspection on the Sunday morning before the showjumping, when suspense hangs in the air outside the Duke of Beaufort’s house and hangovers from the post-cross-country revelry at the Pig & Whistle bar by the main screen are put to rest.

Back in Town, by the middle of May, Chelsea has come into bloom, with a technicolour world appearing in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. ‘I felt positively star-struck, as if there was a sprinkling of fairy dust everywhere,’ remembers American-born garden designer Butter Wakefield of her debut visit to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show more than a decade ago, when she was a student at the London College of Garden Design. ‘I marvelled at the sheer scale of the process and the remarkable things that go on behind the scenes, witnessing gigantic trees and beautifully formed hedging being hoisted into position to create instant gardens.’

She advises: ‘For the very happiest day at Chelsea, I recommend super comfortable shoes (leave your heels at home) — stylish trainers or a more robust Chelsea-type boot if it’s wet. Checking the weather forecast sounds obvious, but I have seen ladies woefully underdressed countless times, so always take extra layers.’

An early start, early in the week (Tuesday is RHS members’ day) is Ms Wakefield’s preference, ‘when everything and everyone is fresh, glossy and glad to see you’. For weary flower lovers to dine comfortably after a long day, The Cadogan on Sloane Street, SW1, is ‘thoroughly spoiling’. The whole glorious month of May, for Ms Wakefield, has ‘a real sense of hope in the air. It seems to invite a sense of giddiness and cause for celebration. I feel it might be like going to the Met Gala or some other great occasion where the world stops and wonders in astonishment’.

Equally mesmerising is the spectacle of Trooping the Colour in June, as spellbinding to the blue-red-blue tie-wearing veterans as to the cluelessly uninitiated, with more than 1,400 officers and soldiers, 200 horses and more than 400 musicians marching on Horse Guards Parade with painstaking precision to mark The King’s official birthday. Make-up setting spray is a secret weapon for ladies if your seats are in the sun for the duration and the best debrief lunch is at The Cavalry & Guards Club on Piccadilly, W1 (as young officers and their entourage descend back on Wellington Barracks to open celebratory Champagne with a swipe of their sword).

At Wimbledon at the end of the month, in-the-know members are first in line for the Chelsea buns to be washed down with a flat white as they study the order of play, before hovering on the bridge between Members and the players’ corridor to spot the big names. The late quarter-finalist Jean Quertier trained the lucky relatives who enjoyed her lifelong Centre Court seats — perfectly placed to watch the comings-and-goings in the Royal Box — to say no to ice in their Pimm’s to bank a fuller glass. ‘The first Friday was the best, as there were still lots of players, but you’ve weeded out some of the chaff,’ says one of her great-nieces, who recommends using the charity car parking in the driveways of Wimbledon Village (‘support the RNLI and save your legs’), as well as clinching second-hand balls from the Southern Village store.

For more picnicking grandeur, Glyndebourne in East Sussex raises the stakes: think starch-white tablecloths, dinner candles and black-tie clad diners near the ha-ha. ‘People picnicking in my garden has been happening all my life. As a child, we had to stop playing cricket on the lawn after lunch, which was irritating.

There were pluses — an endless supply of strawberries, for example,’ admits the opera’s executive chairman Gus Christie, grandson of John Christie and Audrey Mildmay, who founded the festival more than 90 years ago. ‘People often assume that Glyndebourne is an open-air venue because of the images of guests picnicking, but, in fact, we have a state-of-the-art indoor auditorium,’ Mr Christie adds. ‘Arrive early to explore the 12 acres of gardens, soak in the unique surroundings and, if it’s your first opera, don’t worry about understanding every detail — let the music and drama wash over you.’

At Henley Royal Regatta, Oxfordshire, in early July, picnics might not be candlelit, but one rowing-mad Old Radleian insists on forgoing the set lunch or tea menu in the Stewards’ Enclosure in favour of ‘an opulent picnic in Lion Meadow car park, preferably a side of salmon served from the boot of the Bentley. The more silverware the better,’ he emphasises, tipping a visit to the Regatta Enclosure to get close to the crews and listen in to pre-race pep talks, before winding down with the entertainment along the towpath and ending the night at Barn Bar alongside rowdy crews commiserating after being knocked out.

Legs satisfyingly sore and fuelled by Pimm’s, each of the Season’s staples — whether on the riverbank, racecourse or to the sound of Le Nozze di Figaro — is a delicious chance to step back in time and bask in the best of Britain, until the sun sets on another summer and the Panama is put out to pasture once more.