Had a really interesting day today, we had been told about a few horses for sale via Twitter so today was spent at two trainers yards having a look at them.
The more time I spend around racing yards and with trainers I realise how generous these people are with their time, and also what fantastic stories they have to tell and how great their sense of humour is. I guess being around horses you have to have a good sense of humour as they all have a way of cutting you down to size if you start taking things just that bit too seriously.
First yard today was in Lambourn village, living not that far from Lambourn I have visited a couple of times but I never realised how tucked away the yards can be, what looks like a house from the road can hide a yard of 30 stables, a couple of paddocks with a gallop going around the outside of them. The trainer we met was Roger Curtis along with Dawn, amateur rider Freddie Tett and jockey Hadden Frost. The yard was very friendly, including having the smiliest German Shepherd I have met in my life who likes to bring you presents of stones which was very funny.
Roger had kindly organised things so we could see the horse up on the gallops and we went up in the car to see them work. Roger then drove us around on a tour of all the gallops in Lambourn which was fascinating, I had no idea there were so many gallops in such a small place. We drove up what was a Roman road and Roger kept saying it was normally a hard track as we bottomed the car and at one point I thought we were going to have to get out and push. It's amazing what you can drive a small family hatchback over and not get stuck. We returned to the yard with a very muddy car and me making a mental note not to get in to a car being driven off road by anyone involved in NH racing again. We really enjoyed meeting everyone and really appreciated the time Roger took out of his busy day to show us around.
Next stop was Fergal O'Brien's yard in Glouctershire, this is a very different type of yard to Roger's, a combination of newly built American barns and converted buildings on what was an arable farm, it is owned by jockey Timmy Murphy and Fergal has not been there very long. Lots of work still going on and you can see when it is finished the facilities will be really great, Fergal said he will be able to take about 70 horses when everything is finished. Again Fergal had kindly arranged for us to see the two horses working, and as we were running late this meant both had had their lunch held back and possibly the two grooms had missed theirs as well. However again everyone was very friendly and Fergal invited us to jump in the Land Rover to drive over to the gallops to see the two horses come up. At this point being in the back of a Land Rover I felt safe that we were not going to have a problem with the ground and so when Fergal invited us to go on a bit of a tour of the property to see the training paddock, hunt jumps and hacking routes around the fields I felt sure that we weren't going to get stuck and would be absolutely fine. One power slide towards a ditch later and I was revising my opinion and reiterating the NH trainer + car + off road = wear seat belt and hang on.
The three horses we saw were all very different types but all lovely. John and I have some thinking to do now about our next steps with EPDS, we will have firmed up our plans for Amazon by the end of this week as well so exciting times ahead.
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