Making it Happen: The Autobiography by Carl Hester

Author:Carl Hester [Hester, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2014-05-07T22:00:00+00:00

10

On and Up, Up, Down and Up

I had been thinking for a while that the outlay in renting a yard wasn’t the greatest investment in the world, and Richard Davison, who is brilliant at the business side, kept on at me about buying and investing in property, so I got to looking around. A ready-made set-up as I imagined it was way beyond my price range, but then I came across a sixteenth-century Gloucestershire mill house with thirty acres. As I had done with the barn, I fell in love with it and knew I had to have it. Having gone through what amounted to an interview process with the mill’s outgoing owners, I’d got the call during the World Cup Final in Vegas that it was mine.

Kate’s husband Stuart took on the project management and planning applications; he’d got the experience whereas I hadn’t much of a clue except knowing what I wanted. The only outbuilding was an old barn sitting on the highest point up the hill from the house. That, I decided, was where the stables would go. They had to really as the lower fields are on a flood plain. But there was a shock in store when we discovered three springs around the barn. The bill for putting in the land drains was an even bigger shock, but at least the yard has never flooded and while I might have not just touched wood but grabbed a tree trunk to say this, neither has the mill. I could claim King Canute-like talents as water had literally come to the mill’s front door but in all its history floods have held back from invading the house.

It was some time before we could move in but when we did, talking of invasions, we threw a housewarming party. I’d met Robert Oliver in 2000 when Horse and Hound asked me to go and ride one of his show horses for the ‘Dream Rides’ series. Having initially been underwhelmed at the thought I had a fabulous day and a fabulous gallop on Irene Susca’s lovely middleweight champion Jamaica Bay and plenty of laughs with Robert, who is a big character. The party had kicked off around eight. Unbeknown to me about a mile away as the crow flies my new neighbour Robert was having a barbecue. His wife Claire, a contemporary of mine in young rider days who won gold on Another Fred and was on the eventing young rider team with our mutual friend Vanessa Ashbourne, swears she tried to stop him after a heavy night of drinking but shortly before midnight on what was a beautiful summer’s night I was sitting in the garden with some friends when we heard a hunting horn. Where on earth are we living that there’s midnight hunting? I thought as hooves thundered down the then gravel drive accompanied by hounds in full cry. Everyone ran through to the front of the house to see Robert on a great big cob, two girl grooms, bareback with blonde hair flying, and hounds milling about.

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