This is your chance to be part of Horse & Hound.
The 9 July issue of H&H will be our nostalgia reader special, and we are asking readers to send their stories, memories and scans of photos of their best, funniest, most wonderful, interesting or enjoyable times with horses, be it in competition, leisure or as a spectator, from any year before 1980.
We want to cover the way things were, how we did things differently with our horses then, the places we rode, from long-gone show centres to since built-over countryside – our first glimpses of riders who went on to be stars, or our favourite memories of seeing the legends of yesteryear in action.
We’re also after your best photographs, though we remind everyone not to post these as we are all working from home and won’t receive anything at the office currently, but if you can scan a picture and email it to us, adding who took the photo and whether you have the right to share it, that would be ideal. You can even take a picture of a quality photo on your phone.
Please can you send your best memories to H&H features editor Martha Terry at martha.terry@ti-media.com, by 28 May, including your full name and contact number.
H&H editor-in-chief Sarah Jenkins said: “During lockdown I know how many of you have taken to the attic to clear out or simply go through treasured possessions for the wonderful memories these evoke.
“I have seen readers share their best pictures, recalling the happiest of days out riding for hours with a hoof pick on the D-ring and a picnic in the saddlebag. Galloping riding-school ponies up to the stables from summer pastures, bareback in headcollars.
“Summer holidays spent sitting in the haybarn, making wisps and haynets from baler twine. Bathing ponies daily – Fairy liquid in their tails and oil on their hooves. Chase me Charlies, apple bobbing, best turned out.
“First shows, first falls, first rosettes, first horses, first friends – lifelong friends. Jute rugs thatched with straw, those sweatblankets that were just holes, and New Zealand rugs of the stiffest canvas that you could barely even lift.
Continues below…
Runaway Shetland Mildred joins in with 10km race
The unusually hairy competitor kept up with runners from the 7km to the 9km marker, where she was eventually caught
13 things you’ll remember if you were pony-mad in the 80s
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“Ginny Elliot, Eddie Macken and David Tatlow. Crying over Flambards or Black Beauty. Watching National Velvet. Watching Harvey Smith flick that V sign. Seeing Lucinda’s sixth Badminton win. Watching old-format eventing, or showjumping with wooden poles. Galloping down Rotten Row. And on it goes.
“Help us relive all those days, and those far further back than my living memory. Tell us your greatest equestrian memories, however modest or grand. We can’t wait to read them and share them with so many riders and horse lovers also missing the ‘good old days’.”
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