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Nine young drivers from Devon to Lancashire came to Oak Lane Farm to attend the first British Young Drivers training event. There were drivers of varying degrees of ability and confidence and our kind host and trainer Georgina Frith catered for everyone’s needs. Saturday was focused more towards dressage and concentrated on improvement of driver accuracy, the shape of the horse and bringing on youngsters. There was also a long reining lesson where we were educated in the various ways in which this valuable skill could be used to help the bend, head carriage and balance of a horse. This also included a demonstration of the uses of the pessoa and various ways of imitating its effect upon the horse. The afternoon sessions followed and ran until dusk. This was excellent because it allowed the mornings teachings to be reinforced and built upon.

After a mentally exhausting day’s training the various horses, ranging from Shetlands to Gelderlanders were put to bed and we all prepared ourselves for the evening’s entertainments. We were kindly fed a top quality meal by Vicky Edmondson followed by a very engaging and original talk on basic horse health care. This included taking the pulses, teeth, administering injections and respiratory rates of horses. James Gambs, the brave soul, successfully managed to inject one of Vicky’s horses without being kicked.

The next day we were up early to attend to our horses and help build the morning’s cone course, a group walk to analyse how we should attempt to make the time without sacrificing accuracy followed this. We were all somewhat anxious after attempting to find our turnouts pulses, only to discover they were all dead. However, this did not seem to affect their form. The morning ran smoothly to the credit of organiser Ben Grose and successful lessons were had by all. Next was an obstacle lesson, which aimed at improving speed and how smoothly the obstacle was driven. It was excellent and offered routes suitable for all the turnouts. This meant there was fierce competition, which produced very fast but controlled obstacle times. The day was ended with a drive off between James Gambs and I with his super Shetland, Pilgrim. This produced the quickest times of the day at the expense of some paintwork on my part, but to no avail as James unfortunately beat me by a second. The afternoon was a great end to a great weekend.

On behalf of all those who attended, I would like to thank Georgina for allowing some of us to use her wonderful horses. Also all her team for all their help designing the obstacles/ cones and helping the young drivers. I would also like to thank Ben and his contact in the sky who supplied us with the excellent weather, considering it was December. Finally, I would like to say well done to everyone for running the first and very successful British Young Drivers regional training clinic and I hope that many more follow in its footsteps.

Frank Campbell