Facilities

West Forest Farm was a successful training yard before I purchased it, Distant Thunder was trained here to win two PTP classic races in 2006. It also homed top show hunter horses. Before that it was a dairy farm. I have changed lots to suit my style of training and horse management.

Stables – The main barn has 11 stables, they are 12ft wide and 20ft deep making them rather roomy, with rubber mats and auto drinkers. The middle barn houses a further six boxes while the far barn has eight additional stables if needed.

Canter – The canter is 3 meters wide and six furlongs long, the surface is the old polytrack from Wolverhampton racecourse. Two sides are flat, one has a gradual rise while the opposite side has a dip in the middle. It teaches horses to balance and all horses are forced to go in front and behind so that they can cope with whatever is thrown at them when it comes to racing. 

Outside School – I replaced a 25m square sand school and a similar size jumping ring, with a 50m long by 25m wide school it has further curved ends for canter laps, it has an activ-track surface which is great in cold weather. 

Jumps - I own four schooling fences, two from the now defunct Twesledown that I home at my Grans which has much drier ground and used for schooling upsides. While on the farm we have a plain and a open ditch. We have various types of hurdles that move from the school out to the middle of the gallop for education and the hurdlers, while I am in the process of building jumps that the tractor can put on the gallop for all weather practice.

Inside School – We have a small indoor school that we use for loose schooling and lunging, it again adds to the options when other people are frozen or under snow.

Walker – We have a Claydon 5 horse walker, I use it to aid training, sometimes as a warm up/cool down, other times as an extra work out. If the weather does n’t allow turnout they would go on the walker an hour plus on their day off too.

Roll pit - in the old hay barn when I upgraded the school I built a 15 meter round very deep roll pit, all  the horses roll after cantering.

Hacking – We are fortunate to have good hacking around us, virtually straight out of the farm there is a good hill to trot up. Once at the top of the hill there are acres of woodland to hack around, mostly on semi-permanent tracks so are use able all year round.

Turnout – With a farm of 50 acres we have plenty of turn out, ranging from drained ½ acre individual paddocks to use in the winter, up to 15 acre fields for haylage and summer turnout. While horses are a herd animal, I try hard to pair them up before they go out, using adjacent stables with chat grills.

Lorry – I have a two horse Equitrek lorry. I try and get all the horses in training off the farm atleast once a week. We are 20 minutes from superb bridleways at Longbridge Deverill, where we can do cantering and fast work on lovely old turf. There is also a ford to stand in to aid any leg injury's/tiredness afterwards. I also use local trainers gallops for a change of scenery or to add to a training regime (eg to increase stamina or do a piece of fast work.) Other options open to us are Larkhill for a racecourse gallop/school and a couple of family owned local large indoor schools for cantering if the weather is horrid. 

Activo Med rug –  the rug can give a pulse massage and/or magnetic therapy in a series of programmable sequences. It also has a cluster laser  that works off the computer and battery to help mend specific injuries.