Carriage driving has long been a favorite pastime of the British royal family, from Prince Philip to his granddaughter Lady Louise Windsor. Curious to experience it for myself, I, along with my colleague Ainhoa, took the train to Sevenoaks, England one rainy morning to try our hand at the royal-loved sport.
Sara Howe, who owns and runs a driving centre, showed me the ropes, or rather, handed me the reins during a lesson. The initial apprehension I felt about the carriage tipping over quickly subsided and, within minutes, I found driving a carriage surprisingly relaxing.
A recreational sport
As Sara pointed out, carriage driving doesn’t have to be competitive, it can be recreational. “100 percent it can be and it should be for pleasure. You should enjoy it,” the Bradbourne Riding & Training Centre instructor emphasized to HELLO!.
And in her opinion, it’s actually easier to get the hang of than horseback riding. She explained: “Because with the riding, you’ve got to learn the rhythm, and you’ve got to rise up and down. With the carriage driving, you are sitting in a carriage, so once you feel safe in that, you actually sometimes feel that dealing with the horse is a different thing. When you’re riding it, you’ve got to deal with it. You’ve got your balance to deal with. You’ve got to rise up and down, and you’ve got so many things to remember with that.”
© Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images“You can learn to carriage drive, depends how many times you do it, but I would say a good three or four times you’re getting the basics of it, and then you go on for years and years and years, and every day is a learning day,” Sara added.
© Alexandra HurtadoIt’s a direct line of communication between the reins in your hands and the horse’s mouth. “Handling the horse is down the reins, but we do say whatever’s in the brain goes straight down the reins,” Sara noted. “So if you’re a bit nervous up here, it travels all the way down, and then you give that information to the horse. So if you can be nice and calm up here, then everything happens nice and calm.”
© Ainhoa BarcelonaAnyone can do it
While I felt comfortable by the end of the lesson, I certainly wouldn’t say I’m ready to head out sans an instructor by my side. The beauty of the sport, though, is that you don’t have to start young. Lady Louise, born in 2003, made her debut as a carriage driver at the Royal Windsor Horse Show in 2017.
“If you want to start doing carriage driving, anyone can do it, children, adults, anybody can do carriage driving, male, female, whatever,” Sara said. “And I think with doing carriage driving, it builds up the rapport with animals, and it builds your confidence up, and it makes you slightly think out of the box, a little bit. So it’s all positive, and win-win all the way.”
© Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty ImagesIt’s also a sport that can be picked up later in life, as Prince Philip did when he took up carriage driving after giving up polo at the age of 50. “I was looking round to see what next, I didn’t know what there was available,” Philip once told ITV. “And I suddenly thought, well, we’ve got horses and carriages so I thought why don’t I have a go.”
While King Charles’ father retired from competing in 2003, he continued to drive a carriage into his 90s. Stuart O’Brien, owner of The Two Brewers pub in Windsor, previously told HELLO! that the late Queen’s husband “used to go passing [in] his carriage quite a lot, on a daily occasion”.
So if you’re tempted to try the royal pastime for yourself, don’t let nerves stop you from taking the reins!
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