New Hosts Wanted
in Dorset, North Yorkshire, Rutland and the Cotswolds
We have a small turnover of existing Bridle Rides hosts each year, and need one or two new ones to replace people who are selling up, retiring or whose circumstances have changed.
Lots of people contact us to offer their services and we can’t always help because they’re either outside our network areas or aren’t in the right location to fit with our existing rides. That said, we need people in the following specific locations for the start of the new season in 2005:-
- In south Dorset, between Litton Cheney, Portesham and Winterborne Steepleton.
- In the South Cotswolds near Minchinhampton Common.
- Near Belvoir Castle at the northern end of our Rutland network.
- In Egton or Grosmont in our North York Moors network.
We’d also like to link the east and west sides of the North Cotswolds network – so if you leave near near Great Wolford or the Barringtons, we’d like to hear from you.
You don’t need to run a regular B&B to host Bridle Riders – although many of our current hosts do. The others are a mixture of livery yards, farming families and horsy people who like hosting other riders on an occasional basis.
The photo on the left is a good example of what is needed – ie. a field with good quality, stock-proof fencing and sufficient space in which to park a lorry or car and trailer for a few days.
If you want to know more, here’s a list of the attributes we’re looking for in a Bridle Rides host:-
Ability to accommodate at least 4 human guests and provide grazing for their horses in a securely fenced, stockproof field. We promise our customers that their horses will never share a field with other, local horses – so you’ll need to provide a separate field for them.
Enough space in which our customers can park their vehicle(s) (ie. lorry or car and trailer) while they are riding for a few days.
Many (but not all) of our hosts are able to offer an evening meal. It’s a real bonus if you can because many customers enjoy sharing supper with their hosts after a long day in the saddle.
Although we research horse friendly lunch-stops, some customers will ask for a pack-lunch to put in their saddle bag (eg. sandwich, penguin bar, apple and a drink).
While grazing is essential, it is nice if you can offer stables too. When you consider that about 75% of our customers prefer turnout, they are not a “must have”. However, we would ideally like to offer a choice of “all stable” rides for the other 25% if at all possible!
If you can’t provide stables, you need somewhere dry (eg. a barn or covered yard) where customers can groom and tack-up their horses in bad weather.
We supply you with saddle racks, feed buckets, a basic grooming kit and a feed bin for our customers to use. You need a secure building in which to keep them, where our customers will also leave their tack overnight.
It is a condition of booking with Bridle Rides that our customers have third party public liability insurance, and that their horses are wormed and vaccinated against equine flu and tetanus.
Our legal advice is that Bridle Rides is not liable for any accident that may occur to a horse or rider while they are on your premises. Given the principle of “utmost good faith” it might be worth at least telling your insurance company that you are expecting riders to stay with you.