Imagine a world where falling property prices are hardly mentioned, where the radio doesn’t speak endlessly of the conflict in Basra and Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife doesn’t exist. It is here, in the kitchen of the McCain homestead, eight days before the Aintree Grand National. It is written in the Racing Post that lies open on the breakfast table, in the copy of Owner Breeder that has arrived in the post and it is heard in the conversation of those around the table.

Why would they worry about the human fertilisation and embryology bill when they’ve just lost a lovely mare the other night? In between sorting the post and making tea for two of their owners, Beryl McCain tells the story of the mare’s passing. It was Sunday, she was due to foal and seemed fine. Then, sometime during the night, she started to haemorrhage, and all they could do was take some of her milk for the newborn foal. They then needed a foster mother, but some thought the foal was little and not likely to pull through. Beryl believed it was just dehydration and, sure enough, when the foster mare was found and the foal had a new supply of milk, she soon improved.

She’s a strong little filly and as her mother has produced some good racehorses, the McCains are hopeful. Hopeful, mind, not confident: Beryl McCain and her husband Ginger have been around horses long enough to know the odds. They’re stacked against you, which is what makes Ginger’s achievement of being a four-time Grand National-winning trainer all the more remarkable. The man himself walks into the kitchen, still fighting a bit of a cold, something he must keep to himself and not give to the horses.

But even in his own home, Ginger McCain is no longer the main man. For the licence to train is now held by his son Donald and the operation at Cholmondeley in Cheshire has changed since the lad took the reigns. Ginger got the string up to 45 horses, Donald is now training more than 90, and while Ginger counted any year that he trained 20 or more winners an exceptional season, his son has trained more than 50 winners in his first two seasons. Ginger, though, was the man for the Grand National, the maestro who helped Red Rum become arguably the greatest horse in the history of the race. And when Rummy’s races were all run, Ginger produced Amberleigh House. He won Ginger’s fourth in 2004 and holds the record for having cleared more national fences than any horse in history.

The kid can win all the races he likes, can stretch the boundaries in directions old Ginger never dreamt of, but when it comes to their local track, and the greatest steeplechase in the world, Donald cannot beat his old man. But perhaps that, too, could be a dangerous presumption. Six days from now, young McCain will settle Cloudy Lane, the warm favourite to win this year’s Aintree Grand National. WHILE driving up to the all-weather gallop Donald McCain tries to recall what he felt when Red Rum won his last National, which is the only one he can remember. His mum and dad made the journey from South-port to Aintree and he was dropped down to Grandma Harris. He watched the race on television, and still has that picture of Red Rum pulling ahead on the long run to the line. Donald was six, and had no understanding of the achievement. “It was only when Amberleigh won that I realised what Dad had done.” Sitting in a jeep on a bleak March morning, and watching his string of horses canter by, he wonders again what got him into this job.

“I’ve often thought it was a cop-out on my part, it saved me having to get a real job. Dad and I never spoke about it, he didn’t push me into it, and I didn’t push him out of it. He never said, ‘Next year, you take over’ and I never asked. It just happened.”

Ginger McCain was never a man to shower his children with praise, and when he told Donald, ‘That wasn’t too bad’, the kid knew what it meant. Though he never let on, Ginger wanted his son to succeed him and thought the boy had a chance. “At first, we sent Donald to the local council school, and when I’d pick him up, I’d see every arsehole who I knew growing up and who wouldn’t do a day’s work waiting outside to collect their lads.

“I thought, ‘I can do better than this’, and as we weren’t going badly at the time, I sent him to a private school. On the day he left school, the vice principal spoke to me. ‘Donald is not brilliant, but he’ll be fine’, he said. ‘Why is that?’ I asked. ‘Because he’s a very nice lad’. And I thought that would do me. But a young lad has to go away and work for other people first.” Donald McCain started as a pupil assistant with Luca Cumani in Newmarket, he later worked for Sir Michael Stoute and for Oliver Sherwood at Lambourn. The hours were long, the pay was poor and the experience was invaluable. As enriching as it was to work with two great trainers on the flat, it also convinced Donald his future would be over the jumps.

“You could win an ordinary flat race on the all-weather, or you could have a young novice chaser finish a good fifth in its first race over fences, and I would get far more satisfaction from the steeplechase."

CLOUDY LANE arrived towards the end of Ginger’s reign, the first horse he had been asked to train for one of racing’s biggest owners, Trevor Hemmings. He was a horse Hemmings had bred and the feeling was that he should be good enough to win a bumper. By the time he was ready to race, Donald was saddling up all the McCain horses.

The horse finished second in his first race, and then effortlessly won a bumper on his second appearance. That brought the first sigh of relief, and because there were no particular expectations for Cloudy Lane, the horse learnt the jumping game on some of the smaller tracks and against opposition that didn’t ask too much, too soon. At the end of his first season, Donald McCain entered him for the Red Square Hurdle at Haydock, a race Hemmings had long wanted to win. Cloudy Lane won easily. He now trains six of Hemmings’s horses, and has also received generous backing from many of his owners, most notably John Glews, whose company Proactive sponsors the yard. But it has been Cloudy Lane’s continuing progress that has done most to move McCain up through the training ranks.

“From the beginning, I saw him as a tough, professional sort of horse. One who gets the job done. I now believe I’ve been doing him a disservice. He won the Kim Muir at Cheltenham last season, he has got better this season and he has more class than I originally believed.”

From the beginning of this season, Donald saw Cloudy Lane as a potential Grand National horse. Ginger suggested he should run over the Aintree fences in the autumn, to give him a taste of what he would experience, but the young fellow thought that if he won over the big fences, he would get too much weight in the National.

They talked about it, and agreed to disagree. “It was nice to be able to listen to dad’s advice and then completely ignore it. I didn’t want Cloudy carrying 11st 6lb in the National. I mean, that weight will stop a train.”

“We taught our two children to have manners,” says Ginger. “Speak properly when you’re spoken to, respect your elders and shut up when you’re told to. All I can say is our son and daughter do know how to deal with people, and behave themselves. He’s getting a little cocky now, too many bloody winners, but I’m in the best position. I’m still fully involved in the operation, I’ve no responsibility, and if Cloudy doesn’t do it, I’ll be the fellow telling him, ‘I told you what you should have done’.”

Cloudy Lane’s preparatory races have been without blemish, and with an ability to deal with most underfoot conditions, he is a worthy favourite. The question is whether he can deal with Aintree’s unique challenge. “You don’t know until you see them there,” says Ginger. “Some horses love it, others who jump really well around park courses see Aintree and think, ‘Bloody hell, I’m not having this’. If Cloudy Lane is still there when they start out on the second circuit, he’ll have a right chance.”

Though Ginger’s views on Donald are laced with amusing sarcasm, satisfaction at his son’s achievements runs deep. He feels his legacy is in safe hands. His concern, now, is the next generation of McCains. Donald’s wife Shannon, is due to deliver their third child soon. “I mean, they have two lovely girls, but I’m ready for a colt foal. Little girls are lovely until they grow up and bring home some big fellow and tell you he’ll be helping to run the place now. No, I’m looking for a cockerel this time.”

Grand National, Saturday, BBC1, 4.15pm