Ask National Hunt trainer Ben Pauling what he’s doing at the moment and you get a pretty straightforward reply.

“Not a bloody lot,” he told The Local Answer.

Like everyone else in the UK racing industry, Pauling is playing a waiting game until the sport is told it can come under starter’s orders again.

“We’ve been told there will no racing in this country until 1st May,” said Pauling, who is based near Bourton-on-the-Water.

“We’re obviously hopeful that we can resume racing then, but nobody really knows what is going to happen.”

Pauling, the one-time assistant to Nicky Henderson, has 83 boxes at his yard at Bourton Hill Farm so is one of the major trainers in Gloucestershire.

“Obviously a lot of our horses are coming towards the end of their season,” he said. “But the problem we’ve got is that the ground is sodden, it’s still raining and it’s still cold.

“We’ve not turned the horses out yet, we’ll turn them out a couple of weeks earlier than normal in mid-April and then get them back in in the third or fourth week of June with a view to starting the new season earlier.”

Pauling, who has sent out 18 winners this season and collected a shade under £230,000 in prizemoney, is more fortunate than some because he does not have that many runners in the summer.

“About eight or 10,” he said, “so from that point of view we’ve been lucky that the extended break has come when it has.”

It also means that it won’t have such a big impact on him financially.

“We’ll be fine,” he said. “But it’s a worrying time for everyone, it’s such a minefield.

“Cash flow is so important for everyone but because we don’t have many summer runners, we always make sure that we have enough cash in reserve at this time of year.”

It’s not just racing that has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic of course.

“There are huge implications for everyone,” Pauling continued. “There are no social events, no sporting events; you really are struggling to see a positive.

“Hopefully, before we know it, it will all be a thing of the past.”