How an inner-city riding school gave Grand National guests an unusual welcome

No, they weren't seeing things. Morning drivers in Liverpool really were faced with the unusual sight of a parade of six ponies walking through the streets of the city on Tuesday.

They were from Park Palace Ponies, a not-for-profit riding school which has been providing lessons for children in the local community since 2017.

The ponies were invited to be part of the welcome party for guests at the Grand National weights ceremony at the Rum Warehouse in Stanley Dock – so why not walk the three and a half miles from Toxteth?

Magic, the Racing Post-sponsored pony, leads the way from the Park Palace Ponies headquartersCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

"We have a partnership with the Jockey Club through Aintree and this is a completely natural thing to do," said founder Keith Hackett. "It's the cheapest way to get them there; why use a box when you can walk it? And our mission is to make horses and ponies commonplace in Liverpool once more.

"Horses used to be all over the city. We're walking up the dock road and that was made for horses, not vehicles. The cobbles on the docks were designed specifically for the working horse, they are much larger to give the grip for the carthorses."

Park Palace Ponies mix with the morning traffic in LiverpoolCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

The ponies had been due to parade for the ITV cameras in the build-up to the Grand National in 2020, only for Covid to intervene.

Lockdown posed a serious threat to the riding school and its ponies and Hackett recalled: "We had the announcement of closure and as the chair of the board I was sitting there frozen in the headlights because you can't lay staff off if you have animals.

"But I got a phone call out of the blue and it was Rose Paterson, the chairman of Aintree as she always liked to be called. She said, 'Would it help you at all if my neighbour and I took four of your ponies?' I can't tell you the weight that lifted off my shoulders. It was heaven-sent. They took four and the other four went to Southport, where one of our instructors lives. The minute they were turned out was the minute we could close.

"The PAYE staff were furloughed when that was announced and we took a decision that we would use our reserves to continue to pay our freelances 50 per cent of what they had earned with us in the previous month – the deal we did was that when we reopened, they'd work it off, so effectively we paid them in advance.

"No-one knew how long this would go on for but we're hugely reliant on the skills and goodwill of our staff, freelances and volunteers and what we did meant we hoped they'd be there for us at the other end of this."

Park Palace Ponies arriving at the Rum Warehouse for the Grand National weights ceremonyCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

Even as Britain emerged from lockdown, Park Palace Ponies was not immediately able to resume normal activities.

"There was a restriction on riding schools that you couldn't have lessons but you could have other activities in a family bubble," Hackett said. "So we opened up doing non-riding activities.

"For the Great British art exhibition, when everyone was asked to put a picture in their window, we spent a week walking our ponies round the local streets, telling people in advance we were coming, and they became a life class for kids and their parents while they were home schooling.

"We also had art classes for bubbles across the arena and ran 'quiet corners', where a family could come in and spend half an hour with a pony and a distanced member of staff and the kids were encouraged to write a story or a poem."

When riding was eventually allowed once more, Park Palace Ponies gave more than 900 children their first experience on horseback last summer, with two-thirds of the course conducted in the parade ring at Aintree.

However, Hackett revealed: "Half of our market is schools and they still aren't back with us after leaving with Omicron, so we're still at half capacity."

Grand National-winning jockey Rachael Blackmore meets members of the Park Palace Ponies teamCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

And although Covid restrictions are due to end at the end of the month, he warned: "Without wishing to stir the pot, I want it to be done in a manner that means we're not going to go through this again.

"I'm not necessarily looking forward to restrictions being lifted if they're coming back later. The pandemic has allowed us to do things we'd always talked about but would never have had the opportunity to do because we'd always default to riding. But I really don't want to have to keep on reinventing a new set of activities."

Park Palace Ponies received recovery grants from the city region and the community foundation for Merseyside as well as donations from local companies, and Hackett also paid tribute to pony sponsors – including the Racing Post, which backs Magic.

"Our expenditure is somewhere around £85,000 and our income is around £65,000, so our pony sponsors and other people who donate make up the balance and that is absolutely invaluable because it smooths out the financial uncertainties," he said.

Read more on this subject:

Inside the inner-city riding school changing lives in Liverpool

'I'm petrified for our future' - Liverpool's inner-city riding school in turmoil

Apprentice Hannah Fraser enjoys 'best feeling ever' after posting first winner

'It's a Christmas miracle' - disabled riding school returns to original home

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