Hugo Palmer urges vigilance after migrants are found in his horsebox at Calais

Hugo Palmer has warned trainers and their travelling teams journeying across Europe to be extra vigilant after two migrants were discovered in the tack locker compartment at the back of his horsebox at Calais in the early hours of Monday morning.

Palmer’s staff were travelling back to Newmarket with Baden-Baden fifth Heavenly Holly when scanners discovered two men in the back section of the van at the ferry port in northern France.

The migrants were kept in the back of the horsebox, separate from Heavenly Holly, for around two hours before the French police arrived and escorted the men, who spoke neither French or English, away.

The Newmarket trainer said: "It’s a warning to everyone travelling back from France, but you have to feel sorry for people to be so desperate to be climbing into the back of a horsebox and whatever else. It’s terrible and you really have to feel for them.

"When the box went through the scanners my travelling head lad Pete McCulloch was told by the French authorities that there were two other people in the van and had to wait a couple of hours for the police to arrive before they were taken away.

"We don’t know how they got into the back of our lorry as my staff said they barely stopped. We guess it must have been when they were in a queue for about two minutes at Calais as their previous stop had been for fuel five hours earlier."

Palmer added: "I've never had anything happen like this before although my wife had her boot searched on her way back from Deauville not long ago."

Heavenly Holly (far): finished fifth in a Listed race at Baden-Baden on SundayCredit: Edward Whitaker

Heavenly Holly returned to Palmer’s yard on Monday with the trainer “a tiny bit disappointed” with her run in the Listed 7f Stadt Baden-Baden/Viererwette in which she was beaten almost nine lengths under Jack Mitchell.

Palmer said: "She’s increasingly looking like a six-furlong filly as she travelled into it quite nicely.

"We were hoping to win but finished fifth, so we were a tiny bit disappointed, but she had a break after her run in Ireland and might just have needed it a little bit."

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