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Galloping Acrobatics B By Imogen Barnes Photo taken by Brett Allen of BAA Photography
What is Galloping Acrobatics? Galloping Acrobatics is an equestrian arena display team owned and run by Rosie Howard – set up in 2012, the team (3 girls, 2 horses, 2 dogs!) travel the country during the summer months entertaining the nation! Rosie set up the business in Yorkshire in 2012 where she picked up Helen Gilbertson as her commentator, but a couple of years later she had to move down to Oxfordshire, this is where she found me, and even though she has since moved again (this time to Wales), we have both followed her! Early in 2019 Rosie found out she was expecting the next star vaulter for the shows, but this meant she would be out of action during the summer 2019 show season. This is why we have the brilliant Dolly Haynes with us this year, showing her amazing vaulting skills through years of training and being part of the English Vaulting Squad for all her teenage years.
How did I get into Galloping Acrobatics? It was luck that I met Rosie (the owner) and got involved with Galloping Acrobatics! My mum kept her horses at a quiet yard near Swalcliffe where Rosie had recently moved to from Yorkshire. She had a last minute booking to do Lambourn Open Day and needed somebody to help groom – when we met she told me I would fit the costumes and it would be fun! I had no idea what I had just signed up to. This was in April 2014, so we’ve been together for a long time now!
Once you have put on the costumes, it is impossible to stop! Who doesn’t love 1960’s inspired clothes, totally spotty and stripy and brightly coloured. You can’t help but smile when you see it, or when you wear it. The shows are so much fun for all ages, and I absolutely love our meet and greets at the end of our shows where we get to chat to all the audience and see what they thought. I learnt early on that no matter what the weather, the show goes on. As we like to tell people, we’re not made of sugar so we won’t melt! I’m not sure anybody would argue when I say the last couple of years alone has provided some strange old weather. Summer of 2018 we practically melted in the sun, taking water buckets into every show to wash the horses down and make sure they were hydrated at all times. To this year, where so far we have only had about 3 dry shows, and those have been incredibly windy,and it’s the middle of July!
80 SUMMER SPECIAL 2019
What is a typical day like? Galloping Acrobatics shows tend to be at the weekends through the summer months, typically from May through to September. We always head to a show the evening before we perform, this is for a number of reasons. All horsey people know what can go wrong when travelling, whether it is a lorry breakdown/tyre blow outs/ lorry not even starting – we’ve all been there! Leaving the day before means if anything does go wrong, we have time to resolve the problem and still perform the following day. I believe it’s only once that they have had a major problem on the way to a show, and it was one that I wasn’t able to attend. Rosie went back to Wales with the horsebox and all our equipment and had to load up her car and trailer, and Helen went with the horses to the showground where she had a cosy night’s sleep in a commentary box. Quite glad I missed this show! Another reason is to make sure the show ground is ready and suitable for us. Occasionally the horsebox cannot fit through small gateways off country roads and we have to have a quick reroute to another field. Last year we parked up in a school playing field up in Yorkshire when we couldn’t fit into the showground. I have an office job Monday-Friday working in a grain merchants, so I often meet Rosie and Helen at the shows late on a Friday after I have finished my days work. This normally means they have done all the hard work and I get to arrive and eat a freshly cooked supper! Rosie tends to spend the Friday morning washing the horses and repacking the lorry with clean costume/tack/straw/haylage etc as well as a fully stocked fridge to keep us all going over the weekend. We have a big tent/ awning which comes off the side of the horsebox, which takes a good one and a half hours to put up before we then set up two blue stables for the horses.
Clau Falcao For the latest news visit
www.centralhorsenews.co.uk
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