thoughts on making a temporary arena!

[Dobbin31]

My lovely husband has suggested we make a temporary arena for winter in one of our stubble fields using woodchip and a silage bale fence, the idea being that it will plough into the field in spring by which time i will be able to school on the grass again.

We live on top of a chalk hill therefore the drainage is pretty good but the field is rough and stony. The arena would not have heavy use as would only be me and my stepdaughter using it. I could cope with not jumping on it if i just had somewhere to school, it would need to be reasonable to be worth bothering with though! Just wondered if anyone had done this or similar and what were the results

 

[*hic*]

I did it to see if I'd get the use out of it. I did, and we didn't bother upgrading the surface in the four years before we moved house, just topped it up. I put down a membrane then added 12 inches of woodchip. I topped up a couple of years later with another four inches. Mine was 17 x 35 metres as that's all we could fit in. I could canter my big horses in there with no problems, and successfully set up jumps on a 17m circle at E and B, they were kept fairly small though.

 

[Dobbin31]

Thanks for the reply....may be worth giving it a try then!

 

[Tnavas]

When the riding schools arenas were first put in they had post peelings just dumped on top of the grass, surrounding fence was just low posts and rope. 18 years later they were still in use. Eventually we scraped the surface and dug in drains. The post peelings were lovely to ride on and didn't move around or blow away. Also cheaper than wood chips. When I left the school the arenas had been down 27 years and used by at least 200 riders a week, classes of 6 riders, so you can see they got well used.

Being on top of chalk your drainage should be good, but do you have a layer of clay over it as this may adversely affect drainage.

You should have no problems with wood chips, but you may not want to plough it in in the spring.

 

[L&M]

We tried this and tbh it didn't work brilliantly, but maybe because the land underneath was clay.

We bought some railway sleepers and measured out a 30m x 20m area, which we then filled with wood chip. It was just about ok in the summer, but got hellish slippy come the winter.

 

[Tronk]

Oh what a brilliant idea! Nothing to add but watching with interest as I might have more chance of building one of these in my lifetime than waiting for OH to finish the 'real' arena he started 2 years ago!

 

[coralwings20]

I'm having the same problems with stones but wouldn't wood chip get slippy in the wet?

 

[Tnavas]

I'm having the same problems with stones but wouldn't wood chip get slippy in the wet?

I think wood chip would be more inclined to be slippery when wet of frosty while the Post peelings (longer shreds of bark) don't get slippery when wet of frosted. The post peeling don't tend to blow away or move around as much - with around 150 riders using the arena a week we only had to level the track weekly.