Named after our Big Ginger Horse!
Ginger is a good colour for us, my wife and I are both slightly ginger, we have three ginger cats and now a big ginger horse. My wife rode as a child up until she was 17 then had a long break until in our forties, while holidaying in the gorgeous Umbrian countryside on an Italian fly drive break we decided to have an hour's pony trekking. That was it, interest rekindled, look out bank balance! Husbands take note, it was only cost £18 for an hours pony trekking, how could I refuse!
When we got back home to Hertfordshire, on the north west London border, my wife started sharing a horse. Later, when the owner became pregnant and had to sell, my wife had to buy! Now several years on we have moved to another local yard. I am starting to have lessons and have been well and truly bitten by the bug! Look out guys it can happen to you too even in your mid forties and just as I was thinking of buying another motorbike!
Of course once you have the horse it doesn't stop there and true to form my wife decided to start entering local dressage and show jumping competions. At first she simply hacked off to them on the road but as winter approached and the days got shorter we realised that we would need some form of horse transport. So we start looking at trailers, then realised that the trusty Volvo might be ok for towing one horse on the road but what happens if you want to go out with a friend or you get stuck on wet muddy grass? OK so you really need a 4 by 4, Land Rover or something similar. Sounds good but how much is this going to cost to run? And of course it also doubles for everyday transport at 20mpg! And how safe is a trailer, you hear horror stories of them turning over if you go too quick on the M25 - is that possible, to go too quick I mean. I think you would have to do something really stupid to turn over a 1 ton Ifor Williams trailer with 600kg of horse in the back! But are they really safe, what if someone smashes into the back of you, how good is the crash resistance?
Just when it all seemed to be doom and gloom I spotted an advert for a horse box for £600. It looked too good to be true, MOT (plating) for a year, taxed for 8 months, takes three horses, included shower, toilet, cooker, television....... Ok this one was too good to be true but there did seem to be many bargins about and it had the big advantage that while my wife was riding in a competition on a wet Sunday afternoon at least I would have a bit of space to stretch out in comfort, have the ability to make a cup of tea and watch the Monaco Grand Prix on a portable TV. And I bet if someone smashes into the rear end of your 7.5 ton truck on the M25 the horse will be much safer than they would be in a trailer.
But what to buy, who to ask, how much do they cost to run.... It's not as if you can pick up a Which? magazine to get advice and I'll bet that Jeremy Clarkson will never feature anything equestrian on Top Gear! So having spent a vast amount of time trawling the web looking for information on a horsebox I realised that although there are lots of horse based web sites already, many apart from the commercial ones, were hard to find and had limited information. Most either had products to sell or a service to advertise. So I decided to combine my several of my hobies;
- PC's and websites, at last I had an excuse to create a website.
- Photography, we will need some pictures for the site.
- Horses, aparently there are nearly 4 million people in the UK who now ride horses so thats a good audience.
- Finding solutions to problems, I sure this web site will cause me a few headaches!
- Fixing things, well both the wesite and truck will probably needs repairs at some stage.
One of the first things I want to do is write a review on horse boxes so that others don't have to struggle like we did. I'm looking for input from other horse box and trailer owners, tell us about your experiences, would you buy another trailer or a horsebox. Tell us why. Tell it warts and all. Initially I'm looking at the lower end of the market, lets say under £12,500. If you have a horse box or car / trailer combination that cost you less than £12,500 then let us know about your experiences, good or bad, what to look out for and what not to touch with a barge pole. Would you go out and buy the same thing again? I'll then update my article as feedback is received.
If you would like to contribute with any other stories, news, advertising events, or anything else that you think others may find of interest then please email me. Literally anything even remotely horsey and I will find a place for it somewhere on this site.
You will find advertising on this site which I hope is not too intrusive but unfortunately it's a fact of life that we have to pay the bills, we get a small amount when any of our adverts are clicked or when you buy something from one of our partners, this should hopefully cover most of the sites running costs.. All the advertising should be relevant to each page and hopefully useful but, as always, I welcome your feedback.