Thank you to everyone who came to visit us at our Open Day on Saturday 14th May. It was amazing to see so many people there and it provided a great atmosphere for our riders and our horses and ponies to showcase their skills. Highlights of the day included a rainbow themed musical ride with the riders dressed up as ‘Red and yellow and pink and green’ to follow the words of the song they were riding too.
Emma demonstrated her freestyle to music dressage test that she will ride at the RDA regional dressage competition on the 22nd May. Emma had to show her versatility when the CD with her music on was not in her riding bag and she had to change music at the last minute – I didn’t even realise it was not the correct music!
The ponies showed off their skills in a Grease themed ride with Liv and Taylor riding Tawny and Boycie. Tawny was presented with his rosette and trophy for being the Exmoor Star of 2015. For more about Tawny see his Pony Page.
Tawny, Boycie, Tango and Starra also demonstrated their long reining skills to a farming themed music which caused much amusement to the audience.
The 2pm Friday ride did an excellent country music themed ride and there was also a musical ride by the staff and Isobel on the big horses that did not all go quite according to plan.
There was birthday cake to celebrate Barrow Farm RDA’s 40th birthday, thank you very much to Julie for making it!
There was also presentations for some of our many volunteers. We could not offer riding to disabled adults and children without our dedicated team of volunteers. A range of volunteer certificates were given out from 1 – 20 years (the highest number it goes up to I believe). Volunteers don’t just help with the rides. Receiving their certificates below is John our longest serving trustee (for more information about our trustees see the Trustees page) who organised the car park on Open Day and Sue a long serving ride volunteer who did an amazing job in the kitchen. As usual a big thank you to all our volunteers who did so many things to keep us going.
To see the video highlights of the day please see our Facebook page. It was a great celebration of Riding High for 40 years!