Oakley Hunt (West) PPC blog: ready for HOYS

Last night the Oakley Hunt (West) Prince Philip Cup (PPC) team had their final practise before heading off to Birmingham at the start of next week. Everything went according to plan, the children are all very excited and can’t wait for HOYS to get underway.

It’s a mammoth task to get all the ponies, children, helpers and kit to HOYS. Luckily the more experienced parents in the team have everything running like clockwork. We will be heading up to Birmingham en-mass with 5 lorries on Monday. The children and their parents will be staying in the lorries during the week so there is a lot of paraphernalia to pack.

The Sky Sports team visited us at Tim Stockdale’s yard on Wednsday to film a practise session for a future episode of the Saturday morning programme ‘Game Changers’, which the pony club is going to feature in.

The children’s nerves about being filmed were soon dispelled once the team got on board and started practising. All of the ponies had been recently clipped ahead of HOYS, so they were quite fresh and speedy, which made it extra entertaining.

Then our team trainer, Angie Gates, and each of the riders were interviewed individually about their hopes and ambitions for the future. There were a few giggles and afterwards they couldn’t stop chattering about their interviews.

So there are just a couple of days to go before the fun finally gets underway. We’ll be keeping readers up to date with daily updated throughout the show. Wish us luck and hopefully we can lift the Prince Philip Cup once again.

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