Loriners Part II

Here is the second part of my speech delivered to The Worshipful Company of Loriners last month. The first part is here.

The closest I got to a horse was helping my sister clean her tack, that is until I had a late equestrian awakening in the 1980s.

I was asked up to the Lake District to go to the carriage driving trials at Lowther. It is a three day competition like three day eventing but with carriages. I saw that a referee accompanied the teams, sitting up beside the driver festooned in stop watches and looking rather self-important. Wouldn’t it be grand if I could have a go? The following year I did. The sport is expensive and attracted participants like the Duke of Edinburgh and the Earl of Onslow but, bearing out my point that people from all backgrounds are drawn together in equestrian pursuits, I was allocated to a two horse team driven by Mr Stamper. John Stamper drove petrol tankers in Lancashire for Amoco. He had no sponsorship and his daughter and her boyfriend acted as his grooms hanging onto the back of the carriage. I doubt Mrs Stamper was taken on many holidays.

Off we went on the cross country course; timed sections that took us high up on the Fells looking down on Lake Ullswater. I was thoroughly enjoying myself and even looking forward to the last section which was eight obstacles to be negotiated with time as an important factor. The first was the simplest but drew the biggest crowd. It was a steep descent down a bank, through a ford and up the other side. Plenty of dash and splash and not much danger of anything going wrong. Well, we went down the bank at an angle of 45 degrees and the carriage began to tip. Stamper and his grooms leant over, like sailors leaning out to stop a sailing boat tipping over and instinctively I joined them. It all happened very quickly and then we were back on four wheels but, frankly, I was terrified.

The next obstacle was a sort of maze of posts and rails that we were supposed to weave in and out of. Somehow we crashed. I was crushed between the carriage and the rails. My face was cut open and I thought I’d broken a few ribs. The Stampers, unfortunately, were able to make some hasty repairs to their harness and lorinery and I remounted what now seemed a death-trap.  That carefree drive across the Fells seemed a distant memory.

We got through the next obstacles uneventfully with me nursing my ribs and dabbing blood off my face. The final obstacle – where my friends were waiting to see me  – was an unthreatening arrangement of big circular hay bales. One wheel when we were travelling at speed snagged a bale and I shot out of the carriage like a cyclist going over the handlebars. I lay winded on the ground yards from the carriage.

To my surprise I volunteered for another four years and never had another Stamper Incident. My last driver was George Bowman, still one of the best carriage drivers in the world. He drove his four-in-hand with fierce concentration, completely at one with his team of horses. The carriage turned on a sixpence going through the obstacles at high speed. It was pure equestrian ballet.

That is now a slice of history. Referees no longer ride on the carriages . There were issues of insurance and safety so I am lucky to have had this experience.

Now we must turn to a question that has perplexed loriners since the dawn of time. Why are tack rooms always so smelly? It’s simply because caparisons are odious.

It is a pleasure to propose a Toast to the Company – The Worshipful Company of Loriners, may it flourish, root and branch, forever – and its Master.