Visitors from Jersey

Just recently we had a lovely group of visitors staying with us from Jersey. Even Teddy didn’t know where that is! 

I heard the stables staff chatting and they said that our guests are all part of Jersey R.D.A., who provide riding for children and adults with disabilities on the island of Jersey. 

On Saturday morning they all had a horse riding lesson, they were quite excited to be riding horses a bit bigger than Toffee and Darcy who are two of the ponies they ride at R.D.A.  After a bit of getting to know us horses they played a game of chase with Abi to practice steering. Some of the riders used special reins with loops on to make steering easier.

The group also did some grooming and learnt about the parts of a horse.  The mums even got to have a ride which the children found very exciting!  They took lots of photos, some of which are in the gallery on their website.

The children all went for a ride on the track in the afternoon, down towards the reservoir and round the woods.  Everyone loved this as they hadn’t done it before. 

On Sunday morning they did more riding and then some carriage driving with Hendrix, he said they loved driving round obstacles and it was great fun.

All the children also spent some time with me in the morning and I showed them all how brilliant I am at doing agility, then at lunchtime the children all helped to feed us our hay.

Sunday afternoon was spent building an obstacle course in the outdoor arena. All the riders had a go at riding around the course which was made up of steering along the sneaky snake, riding through a wiggly worm, staying inside the circle of doom, stopping in the penalty box and walking across the black hole! All of this was done while avoiding the scary bear and using lots of imagination!

Lots of smiley faces receiving their certificates! 

At the end of the afternoon everyone got together to have a presentation of certificates and rosettes. I know all us horses and ponies and the staff enjoyed the whole weekend and judging by the smiles I saw I think all our guests from Jersey had a fab time too!