So long ago, where do I start ...

Every little girl dreams of their pony and how it means so much in their life....................

Anthea and her family moved to Wildwoods in 1971 with 5 horses, when the fields were full of scrub and weed with loopy barbed wire fencing - and it has grown from there.

“My passion for horses started at the age of 4. We used to ride as a family when we went to see my grandparents in Paignton Devon. My father grew up on the farm from which Wildwoods gets its name. At the age of twelve, I used to cycle to Ewell Riding Stables from Cheam to work in return for rides. When I was 13, we answered an ad in the local paper to loan a pony (which turned out to be in the field next to Wildwoods). We couldn’t afford to loan him on our own, so I was hoping a friend could come in on the deal, but the pony was too strong for her. Bitterly disappointed, I began looking after people’s small animals in the holidays and started a “pony fund”. Half the money went to the RSPCA. My mother took paying guests and I helped with them as well.

£160 bought my first pony “Caprice” who was a rather scatty teenage Connemara mare, who later became the founder of the Riding School. Both pony and stable were installed in the back garden on the same day, much to my father’s surprise when he got home from work! Mum had already turfed a good part of the garden as Dad was what she called an “armchair gardener” and she was fed up with weeding it! He couldn’t argue with that and when I came home from school and found him feeding the pony apples a few days later I knew we had got away with it!

At 15 I turned down a place at the Royal College of Music to pursue my passion for horses. When the Headmistress at Sutton High school retorted that horses were “a hobby, not a career”, my mother was duly summoned to try to talk me out of it. She gave me 100% backing then - and still does now at 83!

She purchased a 3 year old Anglo-Arab mare and engineered my father into buying a Irish dapple grey mare when a drive in the country surprisingly ended up at a horse sale! By now the number of horses had outgrown the garden and they were moved to a 40 acre field behind Tadworth Children’s Hospital. I remember my mother and I spending many hours trying to catch a recently purchased Welsh cob who literally showed us his heels every time we got close enough. As it was a pig farm we got quite good at catching escapee pigs as well!

When we moved to Wildwoods my father put up a stable block for our four horses and I went to the bank (aged 17) to see the manager for a loan to build more. He agreed and Dad stood surety for me. I am very fortunate to have had emotional, practical and financial backing from both parents.

I started training with Colonel Mark Darley, ex Blues & Royals, for my Instructor exams and as I was looking after our horses and a few liveries as well, it was a long day. I can remember struggling to cycle up the hill past the Pony Club field in the wind and rain then catching and haying the horses at Wildwoods having started work for the Colonel at 7am. Mum donned wellies and helped, so poor Dad often got his supper very late!

More than 30 years on, we are a British Horse Society Examination Centre and host the Stage 3 and Preliminary Teaching Test exams as well as Stages 1 & 2 and the Riding & Road Safety exams.

You would have thought that I would like to get away from horses sometimes, but I return frequently to the Okavango Delta in Botswana, Africa with guests and have taken groups to round up horses in Idaho on the Montana border and to ride in the Canadian Rockies where mule train is the only transport for your luggage. In February 2009, I have signed up for the Blue Cross Challenge, a sponsored ride trekking up into the High Andes of Ecuador.

Maybe I am just totally hooked?!  Anthea