Craven Herald reporter Lesley Tate looks at how health and safety and the ‘blame culture’ have affected riding over the years. She fears many young riders are becoming risk averse.

I found myself recently sitting down to dinner with a joint master of a Yorkshire hunt. Once we’d established we had a shared interest in horses, we quickly got around to youngsters today and how they learned to ride.

She, like me, had learnt quickly (and often painfully) and we both knew the old adage that you only became a ‘proper’ rider once you’d fallen off six times.

She went on to tell me about her own seven-year-old daughter who liked nothing more than to join her out on the field. She would start out on a lead rein, but it would quickly be thrown to one side and the little girl on her plucky pony would take five bar gates in her stride.

On one occasion, she had taken a hard fall, but mother, keen to uphold her standing as hunt master, had given a brisk “up you get” and her daughter had bravely carried on.

It was all in direct contrast to my own 12- year-old niece who has been learning to ride for a year at a riding school down south.

First off, she had to have a back protector in addition to the hat, jodhpurs, and boots – even though she was doing nothing more than walking and trotting in the safety of an indoor school.

After weekly lessons, she is now technically a good little rider, but she has yet to take a tumble, has only been out on a hack a handful of times and has done none of the bareback, head-collar only riding that once was part and parcel of learning to ride, and which was then seen as the best way to achieve good balance.

Then there was her friend whose mother called a stop to her riding after one of the ponies bit her. She was apparently annoyed by the dismissive attitude of staff who told her that was what ponies did.

Recently again, I was out riding with someone who was attempting to sell her pony.

The horse was a good, honest type and would have been perfect for a capable teenager, but the trouble was finding a jockey whose experience was wider than the riding school. Prospective new owners would turn up with nervous parents, but be totally unused to actually hacking out.

It reminded me of a few years back when I had a few dressage lessons at a prestigious riding centre. The people I met there had been riding for years, but never ventured out of the vast indoor school unless it was to the even more spacious outdoor school, and then only when it wasn’t raining.

Some of these people were literally frightened of hacking out – in case the horse, driven to a frenzy with a bit of grass underfoot, would career off.

I am fully aware of the difficulties faced by riding schools in these litigious days, but it is a shame if only children of parents who own and ride horses themselves are given the opportunity to take a few risks.

The family-owned Kilnsey Trekking Centre at Conistone with Kilnsey has been in existence since 1980 and has had to move with the times.

A British Horse Society approved centre with BHS qualified instructors, it provides pony trekking, lessons and holidays for both adults and children, from just four-years-old.

It is a Pony Club approved centre and offers youngsters without the opportunity to have a horse of their own the full pony owning experience. Pony Club members can take part in events at the centre and work towards 30 club achievement badges and tests.

Michelle Parkin Vaughan, a BHS assistant instructor has been at the centre for 25 years.

“In the beginning, there was a lot less emphasis on health and safety. It was generally accepted that if you got onto half a ton of animal with a mind of its own, then occasionally, you might fall off,” she said.

“A client who claimed to have ridden for many years and was experienced would be believed. They nearly always described their ability correctly, but now we are finding increasingly that a rider will say they can ride and canter or gallop, when in fact they have perhaps done it once before, on a Spanish beach and possibly under the influence of alcohol.”

The centre now only takes anyone out after they have filled out a form stating their experience and when they last rode.

Michelle believes things started to change in the late 1990’s ‘blame culture’.

“I have heard tales of a rider taking a tumble and, while still sitting in the arena, whipping out his phone to call his solicitor.

“One child of about nine-years-old once told me her mother would sue me if she fell off. Thankfully, this child did not continue with her riding lessons and took up ballet instead.”

Riders at Kilnsey have always had to wear a hard hat, but parents are increasingly inquiring about the need for body protectors – although the same parents don’t always see the need for proper footwear, or gloves when it is cold.

“Body protectors used to be for the professionals who wore them when going across country over fixed fences at speed, but now a lot of children ride in them all the time, which sometimes leads to a lack of mobility on the horse, unless the protector has been properly fitted.”

Michelle says that the number of people taken out on rides has reduced, from the early days when they would think nothing of taking out ten with just two mounted escorts to today when rides of six would have two staff on horseback – and possibly another on foot if there is a nervous rider or unbalanced rider along.

“The centre staff would think nothing of hopping on a pony bareback and leading at least three others, often more, to a field to save walking, but recently a college student on a week’s trial expressed horror at being asked to lead three quiet ponies back from a nearby paddock,” she said.

Nevertheless, the centre recognises the benefits of bareback riding and does allow children to do it – but only in a controlled way and in an enclosed arena.

Michelle believes a greater emphasis on health and safety is a problem not only faced by riding centres.

“By significantly reducing risk in children’s lives, it has led them being unable to assess a risk personally and that, coupled with the compensation culture, makes any activity with an element of risk more difficult to provide, as any activity provider will say.”

To find out more about Kilnsey Trekking Centre, go to kilnseyriding.com.

The centre is also running a week-long course and pony camps as well as holding special events at Christmas and Easter. To mark this year’s arrival in the area of the Tour de France, it will be taking part in Kilnsey Velofest.