Holton Lee Summer Fair

Jo & Sue manned a table up by The Barn to provide information and direct folk to the stables.

Perfect weather was forecast, and perfect weather was delivered for Holton Lee's summer fair, an exercise to both raise money, but probably more importantly, a PR exercise to put Holton Lee permanently on the local map. Judging by the crowds and a lot of comments that came our way, it was a great success. For more about the event click HERE to go on the Holton Lee website for their report and list of raffle ticket winners.

There were all manner of stalls, competitions, go-carts, demonstrations, tours of the estate, and a great attraction was sponsoring a Teddybear for a parachute jump!! The Dorset Fire & Rescue Service extended a ladder on one of its vehicles to its full extent infront of The Barn and a member of the Fire Service dispatched brave Teddies that were hauled up to him in a basket, on a parachute to float gracefully down to earth!

There was a lot more going on that we were not able to see as we were busy down at the stables.

Our aim, that of the East Holton Driving Centre, was to hopefully attract the interest of some more willing volunteers to help out at the stables.

We ran some short carriage drives with Marmite in the morning, taking several families round in the 4-wheel waggonnette for two hours and, after lunch, we used Felix.

We had quite a lot of interest and felt that the day was very worthwhile.

I should remind interested parties to give Wally a call on 07790912770. We welcome all comers, whether you have a disability or not.

New Carriage Driving Season 2010

On 11th Feb Keith, our farrier put new shoes on the horses. We were optimistic after a week of cold dry weather that we would be able to start driving by March 1st.

However, since then we have been plagued by wet weather, which means that there hasn't been a day when we could think of putting a horse between the shafts!!

The occasional day of sunshine and blue sky is not enough to dry out the tracks and fields sufficient to allow us risk taking the carriages out without forming deep, permanent tramlines with their very narrow wheels. These tramlines are very difficult to avoid in the summer when they are baked hard!

So we all just have to be patient and pray that this spell of wet weather will soon get tired and dry up and compensate us with some lovely dry weather in the month of March!?