Green Island Holiday Trust

Each year the Green Island Holiday Trust provide a week's holiday for 30 disabled people at Holton Lee, staying in The Barn. They come in groups of 5 with volunteer carers between May and August and they enjoy a range of activities, one of which is a carriage drive with us at the Ash Tree Stables. It always gives us great pleasure to take these holiday makers out driving with us.

Today was the last of the six groups to enjoy a carriage drive with us this year. With a skeleton staff we used Marmite in the 4-wheeler to do three drives in the morning, and Charlie Brown did two drives after lunch, and the weather held out reasonably dry. Bank Holiday Monday is a difficult day for us to have enough volunteers, but two of our loyal juniors gave up a day of their school holidays to come in to support us - thank you so much, Jenny and Felicity.

We were missing Wally, our Group Organiser, who accompanied Martin Hiscocks as his carer on a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for a covered wagon trek at the foot of the Teton Range in the Rockies. Martin has Cerebral Palsy and helps us in the yard three days a week and it was in December 2006 that Martin with Wally was invited to No. 10 Downing Street to be presented to the Prime Minister. We can't wait to see them return with their ten-gallon hats!!

Margaret Newell Fund-Raising Day 2008

The yard fills up with so many of our friends and supporters.

John, Chris and Peter get the barbecue under way in Maggie's stable.

Face Painting by Ali - one of our disabled drivers gets a fancy new face!

Cakes, books, tombola, and raffle all very popular in the cart shed.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all our loyal supporters who turned out, many with their carers to attend our annual fund-raising day in memory of Margaret Newell who died last year.
This year it was decided to organise a simple barbecue with a few stalls and a raffle with the emphasis on a friendly get-together with a bit of fun and, from the people I saw and spoke to, everyone enjoyed the day. Margaret's great granddaughter came up from Cornwall with her grandmother(Margaret's daughter) and drew the first raffle ticket. A lot of our guests went home with a prize from either the raffle or the tombola which was lovely.

A quick count up of the day's takings added up to £548.35 which is just staggering, and we offer our heartfelt thanks to the enormous generosity of all those who contributed to this wonderful day. After Saturday's soggy weather the day turned out to be a real bonus, remaining warm with a lot of sunshine and spirits were high.

The cost of keeping 4 horses and maintaining all their equipment is rising each year and none more so than this year as I'm sure everyone is experiencing in their own lives; so we find the need to raise funds becomes more pressing. The hay bill alone for this year is £1,000 so we'll be looking for more ways to raise money before the year is out.

If anyone reading this blog would like to become a "Friend" of East Holton Driving Centre and give a regular donation, however small, by Banker's Standing Order, a form can be downloaded for you to print off by clicking HERE.
Simply fill it in and send it to the address at the bottom of the form.

New Forest Show

This handsome Manx Loghtan ram caught John's eye as we travelled through the livestock lines.

Some Donkey this one - huge!

This is one of the fifteen pairs of heavy horses that performed a most entertaining musical drive which absolutely made my day.

Surprise,surprise, the key feature we, from the stables, wanted to watch was the heavy horses!!
This year it was decided that all those helpers that wished to visit the show should be able to do so by arranging for one carload on Wednesday and a carload on Thursday so that we had enough volunteers to take care of the horses each day. In fact we had enough volunteers to do 5 drives on the Thursday for guests staying in The Barn, which was great. The Green Island Trust bring several groups of disabled people to Holton Lee each year for a week's holiday in The Barn and it gives us great pleasure to take their guests out for a carriage drive.