More horses: Menston 1970s

[jacey]

I'm not sure how we found Margaret Harvey's Wharfedale Riding School, but someone decided to start a riding club at college (Leeds School of Librarianship had been independent, but by that time was part of Leeds Polytechnic and the Student Union had fundingand a minibus). I'm sure there must have been more than just us few in the club but six out of the eight people here were library students if you include me behind the camera. Left to right: Jenny Fisher (now Downsborough); Eileen Gomersall (now Jack); Jan Booth (now Warner). On the pony (Cracker) is John French - not a librarian. Then there's Yvonne Smith (can't remember her maiden name). Kneeling is Teddi Craven (now Coutts) and back right is Pete whose surname I've forgotten. Sadly pete was killed in the seventies in a road accident in Africa. The dog is called Vandal. Location; Margaret's stable yard - a mews of tumbledown brick buildings off Station Road in Menston (between Guisely and Otley in what's now West Yorkshire, but was then the West Riding of Yorkshire. Missing from the photo are regulars Mike Heywood and Lindsey (now Lindsey Heywood). We were a mixture of riders and beginners, but everyone seemed to muddle along. Eileen later went on to train in Germany and became ferociously good.



Jan on Robin; Jacey on Dominic and Teddi on Blossom. I think this was the last day of the college riding club and we were arsing about up in the gorse field, hard hats removed for the camera.


Left: Jan on Robin. All Kestrel's offspring were instantly recognisable by their heads regardless of size of pony. I wasn't all that keen on Robin, but Jan loved him.
Right: Me on Blossom. I should be eternally grateful to her for not bucking me off at this point.


Jan on Dominic. He was a nice ride, a good all rounder and very untypical of Margaret Harvey's horses being neither obviously from the same line as Kestrel or Fell/Dales. Possibly that's why I always forget about him.


This is Major. Sorry the photo is so blurry. He was absolutely gorgeous. I don't know if she bred him, buit I'll post some older photos in the next post which might give a clue to his origin...

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Wow. What a wonderful set of photographs.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Photos are so easy to take now, and free, of course, that we all have hundreds, but the slightly blurry, badly framed photos of my teens/twenties are very precious to me. I had a panic when I thought I'd misplaced an old album. Turns out I'd thrown the album away but put all the photos in a new one. Whew! I'm now trying to scan them all in gradually so I have a backup.