DAVID Scally and Olive Clarke of Four Seasons Stables in Co Galway give their arena plenty of work. They had a new arena surface installed about three years ago after their first one was no longer draining.

“ The first time we used a local contractor, like many people do, and we got a good 10 years out of it, but the last few years of it, it basically deteriorated year after year, the rain would saturate the arena and it could take two days to dry out. That’s what motivated us to get a new surface as it was affecting our business producing horses.

“We shopped around, we asked people, we went through the logisitcs, we decided the best option was pay a professional company to do the job.

In the greater scheme of things, it probably did cost us €15,000 more than employing the local contractors but in the end it just made so much more sense. If at the end the surface was flooding, you only had to blame one person.

“They dug out the old sand and put more stone and drainage channels in and maybe 30 more loads of stone. The sand comes premixed with fibre and the company re-did the timber fence too. It cost us about €90,000 all-in. The fence alone was about €9,000 so the arena was about €80,000.

The biggest bonus was it only took 13 days start to finish. We are incredibly happy with it, it can rain and rain and rain and there’s never any water on it, ever. We used Equestrian Surfaces Ireland and they are the company who supplied the surface for Simmonscourt Arena and there’s never water in Simmonscourt! In our climate it has to be like that, these companies like Equestrian Surfaces Ireland really know how to deal with the amount of rain we get and what it takes to run an equestrian businesses in Ireland.”