Riding school memories

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Babypony

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Following in from the Facebook thread, I’m getting all nostalgic for my time working at riding schools as a kid/teenager. Anyone like to share any memories?

One of just thought of was when I was allowed to be a helper at 10 years old. We used to have to walk the ponies down the lane for half a mile to their fields at the end of the day. We’d rug them up, tie the other end of the lead rope to the headcollar, and ride them down their sitting on their rugs. I was so proud when I was considered old enough (10 and a half!) to do this 🥳
 
We had to carry a small bale of hay to the field. Once out of sight we’d put it on a pony, get up behind and ride in a head collar. In the field we’d tip off the hay and jump the ponies over the bale. Had to run all the way back in case the owner wondered why it had taken so long. Happy days.
 
Making the muck heap straight enough that you could have rested a spirit level on it then jumping from the top step straight on to the bottom one (& it being the best job in winter as it would warm your feet up!)

Playing haynets on a wheelbarrow roulette (& getting bollocked if one fell off and got hay on the freshly swept yard) cos making a second trip was akin to committing a crime!

Leaning all your weight against a haynet that probably weighed half as much as you to get it hung.

We were either really bad at maths or needed to buy more headcollars as frequently you’d be leading one horse with lead rope around neck & another just from the headcollar (especially if you’d had to trek to the far field for them) or sometimes 2 horses with just leadropes. On the occasions we DID manage to bring enough headcollars & ropes then we usually would try to outdo each other with how many horses we could lead at once. (I think 4 was the record?)

The rush to get the “good” (aka not completely knackered) brushes for brushing the ponies with (there was a level of seniority involved with this as well… ‘twas the law that the new helpers would get the worst equipment… this went for stuff like forks, sweeping brushes & wheelbarrows as well!)

Similar rush for everyone to catch, brush & tack up their favourite pony / ponies (& again if a pony was established as someone else’s chosen one it was considered very rude to “steal” them)

Learning there was a “correct” way to sweep

Tack cleaning in the tack room only a few degrees above zero in the winter (I would then clean my OWN tack in the heated tea room) or sat on the concrete outside baking in the summer!

Ragworting with minimal PPE!

Leading beginners (which we all had precisely zero actual training in of course) and trying to run fast enough to get the pony to canter (everyone wanted the Shetland for this!)

Taking the RS ponies out for hacks and then being yelled at for letting them do things they were definitely NOT allowed to do with the clients (usually gallop races!)

The honour of being allowed to make up / mix the evening feeds (I was of the (correct) opinion that everything was too fat so was not overly generous in my portion sizes!)

Doing the squelchy walk of shame when you’d had a welly sucked off in the mud around the hay rings / having to pull each other out sometimes!
 
Wait, there should have been PPE for ragworting? As a kid, I was just given a big builders bag and sent off around the fields 😂

Playing hide and seek on the stacked hay bales (slightly terrifying thought now)... equally engaging in some kind of parkour on said hay bales.

"Sweeping" the yard by putting the handle of the brush on our stomachs and walking to push the broom.

Trying not to get legged up by the sneaky ponies when leading the lead rein classes.

Jumping into the muck heap.

In winter riding the ponies before the lessons started, so they didn't kill the clients😂

Being first on a pony bought from the sales. If we lived to tell the tale without too much concern, it made it to lessons. If we either came off or wished we had, back to the sales it went.

The strange period of 8 weeks after the tack was stolen, so all lessons paused and a group of about 8 of us kept all 12 ponies ticking over bareback.

Leading a lead rein class and being told who I was riding in the next lesson by my friend shouting across the arena to me 😂
 
I actually went to the most atrocious riding school. Cheapest in the area and for good reason.

We had to lead the ponies to their grazing which was probably a 20 minute walk. This involved leading them along a 40mph road, but people generally go much faster as it's mostly straight. Plus some other roads. None of us had any understanding on how to lead a pony on the roads. There was a section that we would lead them up the WRONG side of the road until a livery saw us one day and went bat shit.

I had a pony on loan there from a livery at one stage and had a bottle on Benz Benzoate (sp?) which the batty riding school owner took one day, promised to replace and of course never did.

None of us could ride because it was just nose to tail lessons. All trot together following the one in front. All come into the middle and canter one at a time, with the instructor essentially controlling the pony with a lunge whip. Rinse and repeat. So on the exceptionally rare occassion that the riding school owner would do something different, it was absolute carnage. One time we rode the ponies in their turn out fields. One of the ponies reared up vertical. It was a wonder the girl stayed on. Mine galloped me flat out across three fields until we hit the gate.

The riding school owner used to be a councillor and was bonkers. Used to say drivers drove too fast, so if we went out in her car (sometimes she would drop us to the field) she would blast her horn at drivers heading towards us. Sometimes we were on a bend and it would have been impossible to tell if those drivers were speeding or not.

Ive probably got more. I need to walk the dogs. To be continued...
 
We used to hang around when the beginners lessons were going on because we knew if one of the ponies chucked a client off they’d let us get on and ride it for 20 minutes so it didn’t learn to get away with it, we were basically crash dummies and got bucked off and launched regularly - could you imagine the H&S implications these days 😁 But oh the pride when the instructor shouted over “can you come and get on this pony please” we thought we were the bees knees 🤣

We also had to turn the ponies out at the end of the day into a huge field they all shared, we’d take them down the track bareback in headcollars then as a prank your mate would regularly get into the field and smack your horse on the bum (with the flat of a hand not violently) and said pony would bolt off across the field while your mate laughed and saw how long you stayed on.
 
To this day I’ve never tasted tap water that was so good. It was crisp, icy cold, fresh spring water. At the end of a sticky day we’d take turns gulping it and washing our faces.

In the evenings three of us would walk the ponies down the lane to their night field which had an XC course on it… we learned stickability the hard way with only headcollars and the optimism of 11 yr olds who watched Badminton every year. Skills that came in very handy would I bought my 4yr old many years later.

The tack room had a small fire in it and in the freezing cold winter evenings after lessons we’d all be told to pile in there and clean tack. The smell of leather, burning peat, and the RS owners ancient Labrador is seared into my memory.
 
Tack room was a wooden shed about 8ft x 15ft with a simple hasp and tiny padlock on the door. Tack for 25 kept safely in that (early 60s).

Saddles having serge or linen linings that had to be brushed off. Heaving heavy jute rugs on and off horses with jute rollers with foam rubber pieces under the roller at the withers. Loads of odds and sods of blankets layered on underneath the rugs.

Semi-urban area so no turnout at all. Instructor taught mounted and used that situation to demonstrate what was required in the lessons.

Feeding was 'straights' - oats, barley and hand cut chaff using a manual chaff cutter - we took turns.

Riding one and leading 2 to the forge in the village (early 70s). Wooden plank floor and no barrier between the forge with fire/sparks and the tied up horses. No haynets - the horses just stood there next to each other.

I grew to love the smell of burning hoof as the horses were hot shod.
 
If my instructor had caught any of us being anything but safe and responsible we would have been buried in the muck heap. Not for our own safety, she never really cared for children, but her ponies were her ponies and not for messing with.

This is why I am No Fun. Probably.
 
When I was a kid, for a while I went to a riding school at Ebford, nr Topsham on the River Exe, in Devon. It was run by a Captain Hewitt who was an ex-Cavalry officer, and who was the father of James Hewitt. I remember James was away at school during the term-time, but came home for the holidays, I remember seeing him at the yard a few times.

Little did we know then that he would go on to become "famous"...........
 
so many memories!
Cantering at a big (in my memory 😂) oxer on a rickety old cob, tiny legs flapping, thinking “I’m not sure this horse can get over that but the instructor would tell me to stop in that case…” the honest pony took a flying leap and I flew through the air like an arrow. Landed face first with a mouthful of arena sand (about 10 years worth of pony poo & wee mixed in).

Pot noodles for lunch. I never remember being cold or wet as a child. But summers were the best - then we could go xc. when they started filling the water jump it was time to get excited!
 
Everyone wanting to ride the pony with the grackle Noseband, or, the chestnut 14.3 because she was an actual horse. 🤣

Summer jumping lessons in the field and being tanked off with on numerous occasions, half elated, half terrified, and being yelled at to lean back.

What felt like endless hours of trotting without stirrups.

The dread of getting the really strict instructor.

Drill rides descending into chaos.

Before I got my own hat, picking the holy grail out of the riding school offerings, that vaguely fitted, didn't have ripped velvet, wasn't brown, still had the button on top, and didn't smell funny.

In every lesson, someone at some point would cry because they didn't like it.

Feeling honoured that I'd been accepted to stay and help out after my lesson.

Debating what was worse, sweeping the yard or raking the school.

The tack room being full of cigarette smoke, mixed with the smell of leather, dogs, coffee and pot noodle.
 
So many of these, but pot noodle wasn't invented in my day!

I don't think yet mentioned is playing in the barn while adults at lunch. Climbing up to the top where there was vert little room to the roof and then sliding/jumping off onto a pile of hay and straw below.
Very strictly forbiddden as obviously a few bales got broken but mainly the risk of us having an avalance of bales come down on us or falling down a deep crevice a long way back. We all survived!
 
Remembered some more 😂 Think I'd repressed.

The ponies all going wild and trying to work out which pony or kid we should try and catch.

Falling off 3 times in a row at the second jump in a bounce - and my instructor telling me "hold still, I want to draw around you like a crime scene!"

Being picked up in the summer holidays by the instructor...into a car full of other teen girls where we sat in the footwell, boot, actual seats...scary.
 
How could I forget the Pot Noodles! We also used to have to hide our packed lunches from the ancient Labrador (whose name I’ve totally forgotten) At least once a week someone would find themselves going hungry.
 
terrierliz said:
I loved these days and can only have been 7 or 8! The highlight riding and leading the ponies back to their field about a mile away and getting a lift back in the back of the land rover - I always slept well.
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I did this too. In my day it was an old Landrover with bench seating.

Once you were good enough to be a helper you were entitled to one free ride.

I remember that the riding school owner was very firm but fair and barked instructions out of the side of her mouth and her voice carried across many fields. She had huge hands like bananas. Once she limped about with a foot in a plastic bag for a while and guess who was clumsy enough to stand on it. Never forgotten that!
She was single and ancient and when she died she left her land to the community to be enjoyed and never built on.
 
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I remember being on a camp at the riding school I went to, with my Shetland. In the evening, they had us sit on a carriage behind the tractor and drove quite a few km, dropped us of with the adult and then we went swimming in a black lake in the woods. Then back on the carriage to go to the yard.

My riding school also did some driving, with the instructor's husband competing in it. So there were a few horse carriages, including those two wheel kinds for ponies. I know we ran around with those.

I rode the whole camp bareback because the 'saddle' was unnecessary. I was always first to mount too, as I just had to jump up and didn't have anything to prepare.

Another time, in the winter, we had riding+skiing combined. There was a large outdoor school, large enough for proper driving, so it was fine to just canter around and drop the skier every now and then (well, quite often).

Occasionally, we had shows. I was at an unofficial one and rode one of the riding school's ponies. The pony Did Not Want to do the test and we got percentages in the upper 20's. It did include running out from the arena at least once. I was maybe 11 at the time and the pony was a cross of thoroughbred and native pony.
 
MiJodsR2BlinkinTite said:
When I was a kid, for a while I went to a riding school at Ebford, nr Topsham on the River Exe, in Devon. It was run by a Captain Hewitt who was an ex-Cavalry officer, and who was the father of James Hewitt. I remember James was away at school during the term-time, but came home for the holidays, I remember seeing him at the yard a few times.

Little did we know then that he would go on to become "famous"...........
Click to expand...
You have reminded me, I used to go to a riding school near Aylesbeare in the 60’s, owned by the Craddocks. I think he was ex Household Cavalry. We used to go up the jumping lane in the summer. Take jumping position and stay in it, none of this sit up, fold, sit up, fold stuff. I remember being bucked off once afterwards, my pony thought it was so exciting! Schooling was round a worn ring in the field grass in the summer. Pennies between your knees and the saddle. If you had a 2 hour ride you could go to Woodbury Common. Lovely memories.
 
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