MY grandfather encouraged me to ride. He was a well-known Aberdeen Angus cattle breeder and had Clydesdales to work the land. My mother used to take the Broughty Ferry beach ponies for their winter break and I learned to ride on them – no lessons, I just worked out how to stay on.
I often rode bareback, with no hat, up the main road to meet friends and we'd gallop round the straw stacks in the stubble fields, then we put branches between them and this was the start of my jumping career! Two of those friends were Anneli and Jane Drummond-Hay, and I later spent a lot of time riding with them – we
