10 reasons we wish we were off to Pony Club camp this summer

Young riders enjoying Beaufort Hunt Pony Club Camp 2003 — Beaufort Hunt Pony Club Camp 23 July 2003 © Kit Houghton Tel + 44 01278 671362 email kit@enterprise.net

(Image credit: Kit Houghton)

What’s not to love about industrial amounts of sweets, uninterrupted grooming and more rosettes than your pin board can accommodate?

Forget a summer holiday to the Mediterranean. A week at Pony Club camp is the dream ticket. What’s not to love about industrial amounts of sweets, uninterrupted grooming, a dose of peer pressure to push you out of your comfort zone and more rosettes than your pin board can accommodate?

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A graduate from Durham University, Madeleine joined H&H in 2011 and became Features Editor — producing content across the magazine and website, including the popular inside back cover article ‘The horse that made me’ and the weekly ‘The best of my fun…’ interview. She has written on topics as diverse as hay making and headcams, to hot totty in the horse world and circus horses. Madeleine now works as a freelance feature writer for Country Life, The Telegraph, Horse & Hound, cntraveller.com, The Spectator and The Field, as well as writing obituaries for The Times.

10 reasons we wish we were off to Pony Club camp this summer

1. The kit list

2. The instructor

The suspense of whose ride you’re in can be too much. You’re after the young, fun and care-free instructor. “Dressage is on the timetable, but we’re going to swap ponies, take away your stirrups and go cross-country…”

3. Hygiene

Showering is admin. As is brushing your teeth. So a week of doing neither is bliss (when you’re eight…)

4. Water fights

Pony Club camp takes water fights to another level. With a water trough to hand, things get a whole lot wetter, a whole lot quicker. And there’s the muckheap element for added… fun?!

5. Everyone’s a winner

If you’re the person who gets bucked off, bolted with or can’t retrieve your pony from the field at the beginning of the week, you have the most improved cup to look forward to on day five. Every cloud…

6. A rosettes haul

When there are rosettes up for grabs for the best kept stable, cleanest tack, eight-year-old, nine-year-old, 10-year-old, long-standing member, new member… this is your chance to tally more rosettes than you’re likely to get for the rest of the year.

7. The disco

The ‘10 girls to every boy ratio’ doesn’t get much better if you’re a boy. The end-of-week disco is a gold mine.

8. Peer pressure

Peer pressure can be underrated. When everyone else is kicking on and jumping a ditch that you wouldn’t dream of going near at home, you suddenly find yourself sailing over it behind them.

9. Sparkly tack

Your tack is so much cleaner than you by the end of the week that you can’t imagine it will ever need cleaning again. And the speed at which you can take a bridle apart and put it back together again is on the brink of breaking a world record.

10. And finally…

Your parents — who have not been allowed near the premises all week (apart from for washing up) — are so relieved to find you and your pony alive at the end of the week, they don’t mention that you were going the wrong way in the final musical ride…

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