GETTING into the Royal Enclosure is not that difficult this year, but getting to the Royal Enclosure yesterday most definitely was, unless you arrived by helicopter or Royal carriage.

Those travelling from north or west of York had to contend with the blighted bypass and a choked-up A64, topped off by some technical hitch at the entrance to the A car park, the A-list parking lot for the Royal Enclosure set.

The Royal Procession was moving faster, and once there, car-boot picnics moved at a pace too to counter the wind-swept, marrow- chilled conditions.

Ah, glorious York in June.

Royal Ascot on tour and its move from God's Home County to God's Own Country has been met with scorn by broadsheet press and blinkered Berkshire regulars alike.

Yorkshire society, however, has always bothered itself with a different north-south divide, which side of the river at West Tanfield you are born: gentrified North Riding above the bridge, mercantile West Riding below.

It would be too simplistic to say those from above with Royal Ascot membership invited moneyed friends from below who don't, but you get the teasing gist.

The Royal Enclosure yesterday was in essence the May or Ebor race days at York or the Great Yorkshire Show with top hats on and more room to move.

Celebrities were thin on the ground, and it is doubtful Linda Barker and a couple of Leeds Rhinos rugby league champs would have registered anyway with this set.

Instead, amid the hat doffing for pecks on the girlish cheek, the clandestine sport here is discreet badge watching, to see if you are in the company of the better bred and buttered, although you don't admit it.

Yorkshire society spotting? The Zetlands were there, tick; Lord and Lady Jopling, tick; the Worsleys of Hovingham, tick; the Sir Thomas and Lady Ingilby of Ripley Castle, tick; plenty more, tick.

Fashion followers may like to know that Sir Thomas defied his wife's decree in last Thursday's style gospel, the Daily Telegraph, that pink is deemed unmanly for a Yorkshire gent by duly sporting a waistcoat in that very hue. Fashions change so quickly, darling.

Royal Ascot in the Royal Enclosure at York lacks the frisson of Royal Ascot at Ascot.

It is York with even better racing and hat dodging, peopled by those who know their As-cut from their As-cot: another division like that Tanfield bridge.

Updated: 10:42 Wednesday, June 15, 2005