The Race Where the Cheese Always Wins
Once a year in England, people chase a wheel of cheese down a dangerously steep hill, and the cheese almost always gets there first.
Before you read
Before you read
Nobody has ever caught the cheese. Send this to your most competitive friend. Once a year, on a very steep grass hill in England, someone rolls a large wheel of cheese down the slope, and a crowd of people run after it.
The hill is so steep that most runners cannot stay on their feet. They roll, tumble, and slide most of the way down, while the cheese picks up speed fast enough to outrun every single one of them. Whoever crosses the bottom first wins, since actually catching the cheese has never really been possible.
Nobody knows exactly how the tradition began, only that people in the area have written about it for roughly two centuries and probably practiced it for longer. Every year, new runners from other countries arrive to try anyway, and every year, the hill wins as often as the humans do.
That's the story.
You just heard Polly
Want to hear what YOU sound like?
Read a line of the story out loud. Your recording stays on your device and is never uploaded.
Not bad, right? In the PollyStop app, Polly listens to exactly that and scores you right away.
Coaching, saved words, spaced repetition, and a fresh story every day.
Get PollyStop freeYour AI tutor
Now say it out loud. Talk about this story with Polly.
Polly is PollyStop's voice tutor. She talks with you about stories like this one, out loud.
Get PollyStop free.
- A new graded story every day, with audio.
- Save the words you meet and practise them later.
- Speaking practice with feedback.
- Polly, the voice tutor, is opening up to more learners.
Keep going at B1
Next stories
Read this story in another language.
Same story, different language. Compare the shape and rhythm without losing the plot.
Keep learning in PollyStop
Listen, save words, practise