APOLOGIES to Jonathan Drake for not only missing the fact that he won a golden button at the recent Golden Button Challenge in Gloucestershire but that he managed to do so after a lengthy solo journey to get there.

Co-founder and managing director of City Break Apartments, which provides short-let serviced apartments in Dublin, Drake was meant to travel over to England with Douglas Taylor. Disappointingly, the latter had a fall out hunting the previous Saturday and had to withdraw the thoroughbred Hurricane Darwin from the Challenge.

To avoid costs, paperwork and officialdom, the pair had decided to travel from Co Kildare to Belfast and from there take the ferry to Birkenhead outside Liverpool, an eight-hour journey, before driving down to Tirley. As he ended up going on his own, Jonathan didn’t hunt with the Ledbury on the Friday but did see them move off before walking the course carefully on his own.

“I had hoped to win the half-bred button with Arlow, a nine-year-old traditionally bred Cougar gelding I’ve hunted with the Ward Union and evented up to EI110 level as an amateur,” explained Drake. “We were up in the first half-dozen or so over the first three fences but had a fall at the fourth where we were totally baulked by a loose horse. I remounted and finished 15th and, as I had ridden in my hunting saddle to bring the weight carried up to 15st, I won the button for the first heavyweight rider home!

“Later on, I was one of 550 people who attended Saturday’s post Challenge ball and had a great night in great company as I was seated at a table with Ledbury field-Master Edward Philipson-Stow and his family.”

Jonathan received a lot of help in preparing Arlow for the Golden Button Challenge from his wife Sarah Kelly Drake who was extremely proud of her husband’s achievement as she was when he partnered his own Jim Keeling-trained Sir Lagrange to win an older geldings’ maiden at the 2013 Ward Union point-to-point in Oldtown.