Signs you were a horsey kid in the 1960's/1970's

The 'Jill ' books,I still have a set and re read them.Still have the 'Jays' books by Pat Smythe. Blankets under the jute night rug with a surcingle with a bit of foam under it.Only pony nuts and oats.String girths,white or black,then all colours.String gloves.Caldene jods.
 
Berpisc said:
So many memories, I am glad I wasnt the only person who rode an imaginary horse alongside the car on long journeys, it certainly passed the time.
I didn't own a horse until my mid 20's, I went to riding schools, had lessons and helped when I was older, also riding some of the more tricky ponies at one riding school with the owners daughter. I also had a pony on loan. I learned so much from those ponies and horses...
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I went on a school trip to Austria & Germany, I must have been about 15 . There was a group of us (who had insisted on going to the Disco in the village where we stayed because we were so grown up, lol!), who spent hours 'cantering' in the coach, along the autobahn which appeared to be made from concrete slabs and provided the rhythm.


There was a saddlers' shop in the town centre, which always smelled wonderfully of leather and carried a wide range of saddles, bridles, stirrups and hunting whips. It is now a coffee shop.

I am 64:eek:
 
D66 said:
Hacking out for hours on the roads on my own aged 12.
No rugs at all for ponies, one new-Zealand for a horse.
Nickel bits and stirrups that we polished til they were hot to get a shine.
No supplements.
No equine dentist
No horse physio
No pink horse stuff
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Lordy! Yesss to all the above. How the heck did we survive!!

I remember hacking to a show 8 miles away, competing, and hacking back again, all on my own when I was 14! Only the "rich people" had transport in those days, it wasn't something that everyone had (like colour TV!). People now use a box/trailer for something just a stones-throw away! Talk about cossetted!!
 
Baywonder said:
I used to borrow our neighbours dog and go over the jumps with her. I used to make them higher and longer and we both loved it! If the dog wasn't available, I always reverted to the mop or broom! :D
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I got in trouble for teaching the neighbour's dog to jump - she then started jumping out of their garden!!
 
Austin maxis towing Champion Hack trailers with two ponies up to Pony Club. The very posh ones had a land rover with a four pony trailer. No one had a horse box as such, though a few came in cattle trucks.

We had a wooden Rice Farmers Hunt trailer which we had to get completely rebuilt as it was rotten.
 
We used to hire a cattle truck to go to shows! One lady at our diy yard had several ponies and used to give lessons to the local kids at weekends, on local riding club show days she would book the cattle lorry complete with driver, anyone who wanted to go would shove their pony up the ramp, nothing wore boots, bandages or a rug (except on one fateful day when a grey pony was loaded wearing a slightly damp, red string vest cooler, when we arrived the colour had run), then all kinds tack and sandwiches were chucked in the luton or the cab and off we went. We were dropped at the show field and left in a heap, he came back at 4pm and collected us all for home. They were great days, everyone was friendly and shared tack, ponies and food. I dont remember any rules about wearing a hat, cantering on the showground or anything else for that matter. Im amazed Ive reached 57 :)
 
MiJodsR2BlinkinTite said:
Lordy! Yesss to all the above. How the heck did we survive!!

I remember hacking to a show 8 miles away, competing, and hacking back again, all on my own when I was 14! Only the "rich people" had transport in those days, it wasn't something that everyone had (like colour TV!). People now use a box/trailer for something just a stones-throw away! Talk about cossetted!!
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Yes!
We went to a gymkhana team games against a riding school about 10 miles away. One weekend they hacked to us and the following weekend we went to them. Our ponies wouldn’t canter at all and barely broke into a trot. We then hacked home again. We did realise how fit the riding school ponies were!
 
Rumtytum said:
This thread is brilliant! I remember all the things that have been mentioned, they are bringing back so many happy memories😊. My family was poor so no pony or lessons for me but I’d walk miles just to look at them in fields and dream... I’d ride (and fall off) anything when given the chance. Saved up for a grooming kit - all natural materials, no plastic in those days- for the pony I couldn’t afford. My first riding lesson was 2 1/2 years ago aged 61 and last year me and my gorgeous rs horse and won the Summer Dressage Championship. I’m living the childhood I always wanted and never had.
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That's fantastic 😊
 
When I finally got my first pony in my early teens (which was just into the early 80's) I used to turn up at the stables to meet my friend. The conversation usually went along the lines of:

"Are you riding today?"
"Yes"
"Great - I am too. Shall we use tack today or not?"
"No - let's ride without"

And so the two of us got our ponies in from the field, put on their headcollars and tied the lead rope to it for reins - and off we went for hours on end.

I really do cringe when looking back at what I used to do!:eek:
 
swilliam said:
I remember many of these things - 65 now. Iused to have a riding lesson once a week from being 6.
When I was 12, I started riding for a traveller who had settled down and had grazing right on 500 acres of common ground called The Lines in Medaway Kent. Anyone else remember the horses there? We used to catch up and ride with headcollars to save carrying tack. My favourite pony once ran away with me across the top of the hill, following a couple of loose ones I'd been trying to herd back to the field. Some Ameriican tourists were very impressed apparently! As others have said, no Health and safety concerns there. Engine oil in the hooves so we could hack in the snow. We all survived
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Are you sure you aren't a time traveller? My grandfather told me that was exactly what he and his sister used to do: catch up gypsy ponies on The Lines and then ride them only he was born in 1902! He gave up riding when he went to sea at age 13 (he lied about his age) so saw World War 1 out as a gunner, then was due to leave in '39 but was retained for the entire 2nd world war too. He did ride occasionally when ashore in foreign ports.

We might have been able to afford riding lessons for me as a child but I think they were afraid I would settle on horses for a career, hence I had to wait till I was away at college in Yorkshire and aged 19 in 1969. I, and others, learned to ride in Menston where we had Merely a Major, half brother to Merely a Monarch; this horse was used in the TV series Hadleigh and ridden by Gerald Harper. We also had the opportunity to upset Harvey Smith if we put the stables horses in the wrong field, and a 15 mile ride to the blacksmith in Otley!

Later in the early 70s I rode from Wansford near Peterborough and on a Sunday afternoon regularly rode down the central reservation of the A1 to put horses in the field on the other side of the dual carriageway.

When I had my own horse about '76 I regularly rode her around Peterborough city centre to go to the vets in Park Road: no call out fees for me! I also treated the dual carriageway verges as bridleways.

None of the above may be possible now, except perhaps upsetting Harvey.
 
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Hacking 5 miles + to the nearest big town where they had an annual horse show in the park. Jumping Foxhunter and B & C and then hacking home with rosettes attached to the bridle!
 
sunnyone said:
Are you sure you aren't a time traveller? My grandfather told me that was exactly what he and his sister used to do: catch up gypsy ponies on The Lines and then ride them only he was born in 1902! He gave up riding when he went to sea at age 13 (he lied about his age) so saw World War 1 out as a gunner, then was due to leave in '39 but was retained for the entire 2nd world war too. He did ride occasionally when ashore in foreign ports.

We might have been able to afford riding lessons for me as a child but I think they were afraid I would settle on horses for a career, hence I had to wait till I was away at college in Yorkshire and aged 19 in 1969. I, and others, learned to ride in Menston where we had Merely a Major, half brother to Merely a Monarch; this horse was used in the TV series Hadleigh and ridden by Gerald Harper. We also had the opportunity to upset Harvey Smith if we put the stables horses in the wrong field, and a 15 mile ride to the blacksmith in Otley!

Later in the early 70s I rode from Wansford near Peterborough and on a Sunday afternoon regularly rode down the central reservation of the A1 to put horses in the field on the other side of the dual carriageway.

When I had my own horse about '76 I regularly rode her around Peterborough city centre to go to the vets in Park Road: no call out fees for me! I also treated the dual carriageway verges as bridleways.

None of the above may be possible now, except perhaps upsetting Harvey.
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Well - fancy that! Definitely not a time traveller, but I know there had been horses up there for years. When I was 12, in 1966, Harry Cheeseman, whose horses they were, was in his 70s I think - so a little bit older than your grand father - perhaps they knew each other!
There's no horses there now - some has been built on, school playng fields and a general tidy up, though last time I went up there a few years ago, I could still see where our fields had been.
 
A battered, second-hand copy of the 'Pony Club Manual of Horsemanship' bought at the fundraising Bring and Buy sale
'Pony' annual in your Christmas stocking if you were really lucky
Reading 'The Observer Book of Horses and Ponies' from cover to cover and picking which breeds you wanted in your imaginary stables

Adding things stolen from the pantry to supplement your pony's bran and chop: a spoonful of treacle, an egg, some salt, Guinness dregs after your parents had 'people round'.

Cycling to the farm in the pitch dark before school and hacking round the housing estate with just a bicycle lamp tied to your stirrup with baler twine, getting changed in the stables and running for the school bus.

Sunday dinner 'in the oven' because you were never home from the farm in time.

'Helping' with hay making, riding back to the farm on the top of a wobbly trailer load of bales.

Hacking 6 miles up a main road to meet your friend, before going for a ride together, one of you holding the ponies while the other went into the pub to get a bottle of coke with two straws and bag of crisps, or tying the ponies up outside the chippy then riding home with the reins looped round your arm while you ate your chips. You got the money from down the back of the sofa.
 
We made our own jumps in the woods and the back garden. The shed was the stable for many a spirited pony...

Thatching, NZ rugs, feeding straights, cork velvet riding hat with elastic (You had a skull cap if you were posh or in the Pony Club) wax jackets, Aigle rubber riding boots and endless leading ponies around the school for other lessons in the hope you would ride bareback to the field in head collars at the end of the day...
 
All of the above plus my lessons were 6/6d per hour.....Ipers Bridge near Farley....... I’m 61 and would have been maybe ten then. Used to cycle there and back, probably 15 miles in total!
 
Dynamo said:
Reading 'The Observer Book of Horses and Ponies' from cover to cover and picking which breeds you wanted in your imaginary stables

Cycling to the farm in the pitch dark before school and hacking round the housing estate with just a bicycle lamp tied to your stirrup with baler twine, getting changed in the stables and running for the school bus.

Sunday dinner 'in the oven' because you were never home from the farm in time.
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All the above except I ran for the train!
 
OK, so how many of these things do you still do/use ;)

I'll start:
drums/barrels as jump stands
reading thelwell books
rope halters
natural bristle brushes and linen teatowels as a stable rubber

and I've still got ponies!!
 
catkin said:
OK, so how many of these things do you still do/use ;)

I'll start:
drums/barrels as jump stands
reading thelwell books
rope halters
natural bristle brushes and linen teatowels as a stable rubber

and I've still got ponies!!
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All of them. I bought a natural bristle body brush at the Great Yorkshire Show last month, as I am fed up of the nasty plastic stuff which is all that our local tack shop stocks, these days.
 
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