RDA Carriage Driving Conference

Jane said...

The Conference was interesting. Somerset Levels Group use two Comtois horses (French draughts)and brought one of them for the demonstration. Beautiful mare but may be a bit too big for our uses.

This 4-wheel carriage was demonstrated as not acceptable by the RDA, but privately owned and used on  the owner's insurance. An RDA whip stands on the back step. RDA carriages are required to have a low centre of gravity and a longer coupling of the front to rear wheels which gives greater stability and makes it less easy to turn over.
The disabled whip will have passed a stringent RDA assessment to drive with single reins.

Jane and I attended the  Annual RDA Carriage Driving Conference on Monday 11th March held at the Avon Equestrian Centre in Bristol; well, just on the western outskirts of Bristol.
The indoor arena is fantastic! The morning session was taken up with a demonstration of a variety of carts supplied by the Somerset Levels Group and RDA guidelines were spelt out regarding suitability.
Our big concern, which is shared by other groups, was the safe loading of heavy wheelchair users. We have been looking at lifts and any other mechanical way of loading heavy users into our 4-wheeler, but the RDA outlaws winches or any other mechanical aid in favour of 3 strong volunteers to push the wheelchair up, one each side and one behind and not walking up the ramps. We need more volunteers!!
The carriages were then put to the two horses and one little pony  and we were treated to a demonstration of how to devise different courses using cones to challenge our disabled whips. Some interesting points were made on how to help people with some particular disabilities resulting from a stroke or some sight impairment, using poles and colour coding of cones and reins to distinguish left from right.