Spring is Here

We managed to get the horses out at the end of March, the weather had been wonderful for some weeks and if only the grass had begun to show any sign of growth we would have been able to get them out much sooner. Anyway, they are all out now and having a great time in the fields. We brought many of the horses into work straightaway; they'd had quite long enough lazing about during the winter when unfortunately we never seem to have enough time (or enough staff) to muck them out, feed them and care for them as well as school them.
It has been a fairly uneventful time since our Newbury Raceday, so I haven't really had much to report; hence the rather long silence. We have always wanted to run holiday clubs and unfortunately Tricia Fenton (Head of Special Needs) was unable to commit herself to the extra time because of her young family. We were sad to see her leave because she was such a good, kind and professional teacher but happily we have been joined by Harry Howells - a former Deputy Head. Harry has lots of good ideas and plans for our SEN programmes, we are also thrilled to have been joined by Chris Parmenter. Chris has been extra busy over Easter running our very first Holiday Clubs. It has been a huge success and with little or no advertising we have been able to welcome over 80 children here in just two weeks.
We have taken in one horse over the last week: Pennybridge - a 1989 chesnut gelding by Orchestra out of Little Snob. I understand he had been in training with the Duke he ran 52 times on the flat, over hurdles and jumps and won 40k. He has joined the old boys and seems to have made friends with another fairly recent arrival Lachendara.
We were also asked to help a recently bereaved family by taking in their greatly loved miniature Shetland ponies - Jessica and Katie. They are incredibly sweet and trusting and will help out with the Horse Power programme when they have settled in a bit more. We went into the pony paddock today and it was fairly reminiscent of the old days in Devon - 6 goats, 5 ponies, 2 donkeys and a racehorse!