Temporary school setup ideas

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Jacksie

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I want to make a temporary schooling area in one of my fields. The field is about 2 acres so I need to portion a section off. It would only be used in the drier months as will be on grass and way too wet otherwise. I don’t want to put up post and rail fencing with it being temporary at this stage. I might look into a proper school in the future but am planning just for this summer. Has anyone done anything similar or does anyone have any ideas?
 
Just put out some markers. You can get cones with the arena letters on, although don't get the tiny ones as they might blow over.

Or, as I used to, pain the letters on water filled 5 litre containers. Measure out the arena, just roughly using you own steps and put a corner marker in too.
 
A good number of yrs ago I marched around to find the best area in my fields, took a long tape up with me and measured out a 20 x 40 area.
When I was happy with it, I stamped in the metal letters, dragged up a few old tyres and fence rails. On each of the 4 corners is a tyre and 2 old posts/rails resting on them at 90 degrees.
Mid summer I used to swap the letters to enter the other way round.
As the area is the best draining, I could be using it now if I could be bothered lol.

If you don't have a long tape, measure using a short tape and use baler twine to get 20m, then remember the distance between the corners and quarter and half marker letters, you can get it pretty accurate on your own.
 
A couple of years ago someone had fly tipped a load of guttering in one of our gateways. I marked out a 20 x 40 school and used the guttering to mark out the 4 corners. I put cones up and wrote the letters on in permanent marker pen. It looks quite good and gets horses used to white boards
 
Our original grass school was set up in the first lockdown and just marked out with old tyres acquired from a neighbour, letters painted on with white exterior paint. This then gradually evolved to adding electric fence posts and tape as a boundary to keep the other horses off (you can see why from the first photo!), obviously not connected to the live electric when the school was being used 😂, marking out the 20x40 with some spare fencing rails, and now finally post and rail as it’s evolved into being a permanent feature of the field (still with the fence rails marking the edges, although I did eventually add in proper letter markers).

Photos below show the evolution over time - it does the trick for us, luckily it’s in a fairly dry spot so is useable most of the year as long as we don’t go mad. The horses get let in every now and again to keep the grass down; if needs be we mow it instead in the spring/summer to keep it under control.

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If you want to mark out accurately, there’s a great page here with tips on how to make sure all your corners are 90 degrees - we never did anything this in-depth though, our original “measuring tape” was a length of fencing rope with electrical tape wrapped round it at 6m, 20m and 40m.

howtodressage.com

How to Accurately Set up a Dressage Arena ⋆ How To Dressage

To practice accurate riding you need to set up your dressage arena correctly. And if you run a competition, you’ll need an accurately measured arena too.
howtodressage.com howtodressage.com
 
Mine is set out on the flattest best draining bit.

Our shelter was demolished in a storm 2 years ago so salvaged planks make the corners and I have those letters you stick into the ground. I've filmed e-riders tests there since Oct and it's worked well.
 
We used guttering, just short ones on the corners and then one long half way down the long side was fine for a 20x40 probably could have done with an extra bit for a 60m
 
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