If you happened upon the market square this month to find a plastic-sheeted table, several dozen bemused snails, and a man in a boater declaring himself “Master of Snailemony,” you’d be forgiven for wondering whether Welston had finally lost its collective mind. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

The story begins, as these things often do in Welston, with a minibus. Dave Multon of Multon Butchers had planned a pilgrimage to the World Snail Racing Championships in Congham, Norfolk, only for the hired minibus to expire somewhere around the county border, taking Dave’s ambitions with it. Rather than sulk, Dave did what any self-respecting Welstonian does when thwarted: he decided the town would simply hold its own championship instead, official rules and all.

And official they were. Congham regulations were observed to the letter: native, air-breathing snails only, all competitors returned to their exact place of capture once racing concluded, and, in all matters of dispute, the Master of Snailemony’s word (Dave’s, naturally) final and unarguable. The racecourse itself was a table borrowed from the Bookish Barista, draped in white plastic sheeting, with an inner red circle for the starting line and an outer black one, thirteen inches further out, marking victory.

Reaction from passers-by fell into two camps: those who stopped, delighted, to watch grown adults coach molluscs across a tablecloth, and those who simply walked on shaking their heads, quietly reassessing everything they thought they knew about their neighbours.

Two heats went off without incident. Brian—named, inevitably, after the Magic Roundabout snail—took the first in a perfectly respectable 7 minutes 32 seconds. The second produced genuine drama: a photo finish between Morris the Muncher and Snail Male, decided in Morris’s favour at a blistering 3 minutes 25 seconds, fast enough to make him not just heat winner but overall champion.

Then the sky opened.

A sudden squall swept the market square, and while the conditions proved ideal for the competitors—nothing coaxes a snail along quite like a good downpour—they proved rather less ideal for organisers attempting to keep hold of a racecourse now threatening to take flight across the square. Susan Crow, watching the chaos from the Bookish Barista doorway, was asked whether the remaining heats might relocate indoors. She declined on the spot, citing her food hygiene rating and, one suspects, a healthy scepticism about hosting livestock among the pastries. The championship was called there and then, two heats standing as the full result.

Naturally, questions were raised. Morris’s trainer, Andy, is also Dave’s nephew, and it wasn’t long before mutterings of a fix did the rounds. Rival trainers noted, pointedly, that every other snail in the field had been fed romaine lettuce, while Morris—a suspiciously spry specimen—had apparently been enjoying spinach. Whether this constitutes doping, enhanced nutrition, or simply good parenting remains, at time of writing, a matter of heated market-square debate.

Dave insists he’ll make it to Congham for the real thing in 2027. Andy will join him, though Andy suspects that by then, Morris will have munched his way into a well-earned retirement among pastures new. Meanwhile, the local bookmaker is already offering 2-to-1 on a repeat Welston championship next year, weather, minibuses, and leafy greens permitting.