7/3/10 Fence work
With most of the structural fence work done, we took advantage of the beautiful weather this weekend to start double-checking and creosoting the fences so they’re looking their best for the ride - it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it, every year. 14 down, only 36 to go!
Before and after...
We also now have photos of two of the new jumps in Happy Valley, 19 and 20, so check the Course page for those.
7/3/10 From the Secretary
Entries are coming in thick and fast for the 2010 ride, so don’t delay if you’re planning to enter.
The course is in good shape, and the RAF’s security work in Happy Valley is almost finished, and I am pleased to say that it doesn’t affect the course as much as we’d feared, but we have had to move jumps 21 to 27. We hope the RAF will allow us to photograph the new jumps before the Ride (keep an eye on this page), but we strongly recommend you walk the course before you ride it so you are aware of the new fence locations. There are also a couple of alterations further round the course, so please don’t just walk the Happy Valley stretch!
The last week of dry weather has helped enormously and the ground is drying out nicely. Long may it continue!
26/1/10 Online entry
We’ve now enabled online entry with secure payment via PayPal: you can pay using a PayPal account, or by credit or debit card if you don’t have a PayPal account. Click the Entry Form link to the left to enter online (or to download an entry form if you’d prefer to pay by cheque).
24/1/10 From the Secretary
The date of the 2010 Ride is confirmed: Sunday 28th March.
We hope to have PayPal entry enabled in the next couple of days, but in the meantime, for downloadable entry forms click the Entry Form link to the left.
Please note that we have had to make several changes this year, so do read the entire entry schedule carefully. The most important changes are these:
Course
There are likely to be changes to the course in Happy Valley due to RAF security changes. We can’t say at present how much the course will be affected but as soon as we have information it’ll be posted here.Please keep checking this page for the latest information and please do walk the course on the 27th, especially if you’ve ridden Halton before and think you know where you are going! I’m afraid RAF regulations mean dogs are not allowed with you when walking the course on the 27th.
Rules
We now require every rider to sign the entry form: please make sure this is done, or we will have to return your entry form to you.We also require two phone numbers from entrants: one we can contact you on before the ride (for example if we have queries about your entry form) and one as an emergency contact number on the day (a friend or relative who will be with you or nearby on the day).
Body protectors and medical armbands must be worn. This brings us into line with Pony Club, Riding Club and British Eventing regulations.
General
We have a new telephone number for enquiries the day before the Ride about postponement and for emergencies on the day should you be unable to find one of our stewards: 07966 377698.Remember that the clocks go forward the night before, so be sure to set your alarm for the right time!
11/4/09 From the Secretary
Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to the ride last weekend and helped make it such a fun, memorable event. I speak for everyone involved when I say how much we enjoy putting on the ride and seeing you all go round having a great time.
It was lovely to have very nice e-mails back from some of you to say you felt the same:
“Yet another wonderful ride at RAF Halton ... very well organised as usual and a fab course :-)))”
”I thoroughly enjoyed it, everything was so well organised from the parking and catering to the course itself ... Please thank all the helpers for how great they were. We will see you again next year.”
“Thanks for an absolutely fantastic ride, the jumps were great, we had such a good time.”
“I just wanted to say a very big thank you to everyone involved yesterday, I had a fabulous ride ... I also must say that all stewards/volunteers etc were really friendly, helpful and cheerful. I shall definitely be back next year.”
We should have a date for the 2010 ride by about November so keep an eye on the website - we all look forward to seeing you next year. If you can’t wait that long, why not try our sister ride, the South Oxfordshire Sponsored Ride, in October
6/4/09 Thank you
Thank you very much to everyone who helped us prepare for the Ride this year, and to everyone who put in so much time yesterday - we couldn’t do it without you.
Thank you also, on behalf of the charities we support, to everyone who rode and everyone who generously gave sponsorship money. In due course we’ll be updating this website with details of the riders who raised the most sponsorship, and some information about the charities we gave your money to, so please check back soon.
The official photographs from the Ride will be available soon from Ultimate Images. A few pictures from elsewhere around the course, including the Normandy bank and girls in tutus, are online here.
5/4/09 7.30am All systems go
It’s a beautiful morning, and we’re off to RAF Halton to set up the office. Unless something untoward happens, this is the last update to the website this morning.
4/4/09 Courtesy
I hate nagging, but we’re extremely privileged that the RAF allow us to use their land, facilities and many of their staff every year, and we need your help to keep their goodwill - without that there would be no Vale of Aylesbury Sponsored Ride.
The gliding club weren’t very happy to be cleaning dog mess out of their hangers after today’s course walking. If you’re bringing a dog to the Ride, please clean up after it (and keep it on a lead at all times, as per RAF regulations), and when you leave please also clean up any muck, hay or bedding your horse leaves around the parking areas, to help us leave the RAF’s land as we found it. Thank you.
4/4/09 Met Office weather forecast
Bring suncream...
4/4/09 Course alteration in pictures
We had a fantastic turnout for course walking today - the perfect weather certainly helped - but for those who weren’t able to come, here are a couple of pictures showing where the course has changed (sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words). Having crossed the canal bridge (left below) on the way back to the airfield, the course would usually turn sharp left along the canal bank, but this year please carry straight on after the bridge, and turn left a little further down the track, returning towards fence 30 between the tall wooden posts (right below).
3/4/09 Changes to the course
There will be a slight course alteration after the canal crossing on the way back to the airfield (before fence 30). The change will be clearly marked, but please do walk the course on Saturday (4th April, 12-4pm) to make sure you’re familiar with the new jumps and with this course alteration.
3/4/09 Entries have now closed for the 2009 ride
Sadly we can’t accept entries on the day, except by prior arrangement with the Secretary.
2/4/09 The course
The weather has been very kind to the course so far this year - a little rain last week, and dry since then, means it’s riding perfectly now, and according to the Met Office the weather forecast is very favourable...
28/3/09 The course
Please note, some of the jumps have been changed for this year’s ride, but the photographs on this website have not yet been updated. Please do come along next Saturday afternoon, April 4th, to walk the course, so you know what to expect on Sunday.
24/3/09 Entries
Perhaps it’s this year’s snow or (more likely) the credit crunch but we’re less than two weeks before the ride and for the first time in its history the Sponsored Ride round RAF Halton hasn’t sold out yet and places are still available.
The ride is on Sunday 5th April, and if you are thinking about entering but haven’t done so yet, please do take the plunge - you won’t regret it. It’s a really fun ride, and the ground was looking spot-on perfect when we walked it this weekend.
10/3/09 2009 entries
The ride is filling up so if you are thinking of entering this year’s ride please make sure you get your entry forms posted very shortly. You need to include your completed entry form, your cheque (£15 per rider) and your stamped, self-addressed envelope. You can download an entry form here.
9/3/09 Course changes 2009
There is a slight change of course this year between fences 18 and 19 to take account of some new fencing. Riders are strongly advised to walk the entire course the day before to familiarise themselves with this new route and the remainder of the course, especially if they have never ridden the course before.
9/3/09 Passing politely
The poor, beleaguered Secretary has received a few complaints from some riders about other riders passing them in an inconsiderate manner during the 2008 ride. Passing is permitted on the course but would all riders please pass slower riders or groups - especially if children are involved - carefully and considerately every time? Thank you very much.
30/12/08 The date of the 2009 ride has been confirmed
The 2009 ride will take place on Sunday April 5th. Entry forms are available now from this website - click the Entry Form link to the left.
30/4/08 Photos from this year’s ride
Some pictures from jumps not covered by the official photographers (SF Digital) are now available. Click here to see them. Please e-mail the Secretary, Susie Bell (info@haltonride.org.uk) for details of how to buy prints of any of these pictures.
27/4/08 7.15am: the ride is going ahead
It’s been dry over night, and the weather forecast is dry for most of the day, so the ride will go ahead.
The course is perfect this morning, and rain during the day will not stop the ride (we had to postpone in March not because of rain during the day, but because it had rained exceptionally heavily all night, and parts of the course were already flooded by 7am).
If anything disastrous happens (plague of locusts, foreign invasion) and we have to change our minds, this page will be updated as soon as any decision is taken, as will the RAF information line (01296 623535), and as before we’ll contact as many of you as we can by telephone.
26/4/08: news about photographs
Sadly, because of the rescheduling the official photographers, SF Digital, do not have enough staff available to print photos on site on the day at the ride. All of their photographs will be available from their website shortly after the ride as usual. Some photographs will be available on this site a couple of days after the ride as well. We hope to have photos printed on site again for next year’s ride.
24/4/08: the ride is full, but we need help
The rescheduled ride has sold out.
However, we are short of mounted stewards: if you could help us for a whole day or half day, we’ll feed you, and you can ride the course afterwards. If you can help us, please ring the secretary, Susie Bell, as soon as possible on 07929 217917.
Please note also that there is no course walking this weekend due to RAF commitments.
22/3/08: the new date really is April 27th 2008...
Some local sources are reporting the rescheduled ride will take place on other dates - please ignore them. The 2008 ride is now scheduled to take place on April 27th.
We appreciate that some of you will already have other commitments on that date, but April 27th is the first date we could arrange when all the people we need to make the ride happen are available.
To make the ride possible we need enough helpers in the days running up to the ride to prepare and flag the course, put up road signs and set up the office. On the day itself we need volunteers to staff the office and the check points, we need mounted stewards, RAF staff to organise the car parking and catering, and of course we also need ambulances, a vet, a horse ambulance, people to manage the road crossings, the farrier, the photographers and so on. Finding a date at short notice when all those people are available to help us is hard enough, but doing that and working round the needs of the RAF (Halton is a working airfield) and the Forestry Commission (the ride uses a stretch of woodland managed by them), and with an eye on other equestrian events in the area and the long range weather forecast, is... Well, put it this way, we’re hoping the April 27th will be sunny because that’s our day.
We hope you’ll be able to join us.
19/3/08: new date confirmed
We can at last, after a lot of running around and rearranging, confirm a new date: the ride will now take place on Sunday April 27th (weather permitting of course, but hopefully we won’t get the worst storm of the year again!). We can’t confirm any more details as yet, but as far as we know all arrangements will be the same. As soon as we can confirm, this page will be updated, and normal srvice will be resumed on the website.
18/3/08: no date new yet
We had been hoping to arrange a new date in March for the ride, but RAF commitments mean we’ve been unable to get a March licence at all (and the long range weather forecast the RAF have given us is none too kind either, so perhaps no March date is just as well with the airfield and Happy Valley needing time to dry out).
We’re still very much committed to the 2008 ride going ahead, but currently it looks likely that the first new date we can get will be in mid to late April rather than March. As before, we’ll post more information as soon as we have it.
16/3/08: the postponement
We’re all extremely disappointed that we had to postpone the ride today. The decision to postpone was taken at 8am this morning after a course inspection confirmed our fears that even with the rain easing the course just wouldn’t have been safe to ride. Looking out of the secretary’s tent onto the airfield, it was obvious that all wasn’t well:
Seabirds swimming on a cross-country course is never a good sign, and closer inspection didn’t improve matters:
The decision to postpone the ride wasn’t taken lightly: disappointing 600 riders isn’t easy, and we know that a lot of you had to make special arrangements regarding transport and so on, but safety has to come first, and jumps with standing water on either the take-off or the landing side simply aren’t safe:
Many of the jumps on the airfield had standing water on both take-off and landing sides this morning.
We considered going ahead with the ride on a shorter course, excluding the airfield entirely, but the situation in Happy Valley was no better, and many of the remaining jumps were also waterlogged, so even a reduced course wasn’t possible. And of course a ride round RAF Halton without the aeroplane jump, without the challenging brush fences up the back of the airfield, and without the beautiful run of jumps down Happy Valley wouldn’t have been much of a day out. (And the catering tent blew down in the high winds at lunchtime, which wouldn’t have helped matters).
We hope we managed to contact most of you - this website’s front page was updated with the news by 8.30am, and by then the committee had already started the long process of telephoning every entrant for whom we had a telephone number. At 9.15 an e-mail was sent to the Hunt’s e-mail group so that as many people as possible knew we’d had to postpone, whether they’d entered the ride or not.
We’re aware that we didn’t manage to contact everyone, and our apologies go out to those people who did make the journey to Halton only to find the ride wasn’t going ahead. Extra apologies are due to anyone who had a wasted journey having checked with the website or the secretary early in the morning when we still thought we’d be able to go ahead in some form.
What’s next?
We hope to be able to reschedule the ride, but we need to get new licences from the RAF which won’t be possible in time for the original reserve date. Currently we’re hoping the ride will be able to go ahead on either Sunday 30th March or the following Sunday, 6th April. We’ll update this page as soon as we have any further information, hopefully in the next couple of days (each time you visit it’s worth refreshing your browser, just to make sure you’re not seeing a cached version of this page).
In the meantime, we’re doing everything we can to make sure there is a Halton ride this year, and we hope you’ll be able to join us if we can confirm a new date, so that we can still help all the charities who were expecting a share of your sponsorship money - it would be such a shame if they lost out because of the weather.
Thanks very much for reading - we’d be very grateful if you’d pass on this information, and our apologies for the disappointment today, to anyone you know who has entered the ride but doesn’t have access to the internet.