I WAS born in Essex to lovely, supportive parents, neither of them were ‘horsey’! My dad (a builder) spent his lifetime restoring a derelict house he bought. My aunt kept her horse near where we lived. She let me sit on her mare as a toddler, and then took me to a local show in a lead rein class when I was five years old. From these early days, my passion for horses grew.

I went to a local riding school with a schoolfriend, but was never able to have my own pony. Dad told me that we couldn’t have a horse until we had somewhere to keep it and I was old enough to earn money to pay towards its keep.