Trent Park Riding Centre

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	well maintained, good facilities, hacking in Trent Park, easy to get to
Disadvantages:	busy, disorganised, expensive

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

***Facilities***
Trent Park Equestrian Centre (TPEC) is close to Oakwood Station (Piccadilly Line) and also has plenty of parking. They have a large selection of horses (over 100) so can cater for various abilities and the horses themselves seem fairly happy. The yard is always being cleaned and the three schooling areas (two of which are under cover) are well maintained. There's a small cafe and other clients seem friendly. Generally, the instructors that I have been placed with have been friendly, enthusiastic and attentive.

***Riding Wear***
You can rent boots, crops and hats from TPEC for your lesson. They also sell a limited range of riding wear. The kit can be expensive, so I would advise you to perservere with renting if you are new to riding, untill you are sure you want to continue.

***Time keeping***
The centre has excellent facilities, but I had previously been left waiting up to 20 minutes of my 1 hour lesson (pre-booked and paid for) to use them. Time had been wasted by the school on the chopping and changing of instructors, finding horses, finding tack and finding the right schooling area to send me to. However, while this can be inconvenient if you have other arrangements, recently when this has happened, they have made up the time at the end of the lesson. Anyway, if you like horses, it's a nice place to hang about while you wait for your lesson.

***Instructors***
Having had a different instructor virtually every week, I decided that it would be better for my confidence and progress to have one of a number of instructors in whom my trust had developed. The school is extremely busy at the weekends, which means that it can be a bit disorganised and although I pre-booked my lessons, they continued to place me with instructors that I hadn't previously been taught by. This meant that virtually every lesson, it was back to basics for the first 20 or so minutes while the instructor worked out what I could and couldn't do and while I tried to build my trust in the instructor.

The different instructors can have very different training styles (especially as some are student instructors and some are full-time qualified instructors) and sometimes taught me different and contradictory methods to each other, so time was spent unlearning what I was taught in the previous lesson.

TPEC is a major instructor training centre, so many of the instructors are in the process of being trained.

***TPEC Services***
TPEC also offers specials such as hacking, pub rides, parties pony days/weeks, lunge lessons, events and stable management lessons.TPEC is a major instructor training centre and offers livery.

***TPEC LOCATION***
Bramley Road, Oakwood, London N14
Tel: 020 8363 8630
www.trentpark.com

***Why TPEC?***
I've tried a couple of other local stables, but they tend to have very young or disinterested instructors and not such good facilities. TPEC offers excellent facilities and some mature instructors with a good degree of professionalism.

*******************UPDATE 13/09/07***************

***At last, a regular instructor!***
In addition, after some perserverence I seem to have had some success and been placed with an instructor on a regular basis. As expected, I think this is helping my progress, as the instructor is able to analyse my riding and suggest changes to aid improvement.

For the facilities, the instructors, horses and the fact they have managed to accomodate my request to stick with one instructor, I have upgraded the overall rating of TPEC from satisfactory to good.

*******************PRICE UPDATE 11/10/07***************

***TPEC LESSON PRICES
I'd like to know what justifies a price hike in excess of 10% without any warning!

1 Hour Group Lesson Prices for Adults (12 and over):
Beginners - price increased from £27 to £30
Intermediate - price increased from £30 to £34
Advanced - price increased from £33 to £37

1 Hour Individual Lesson - price increased from £38 to £42
1 Hour Individual with Advanced Instructor - price increased from £42 to £48

Kids (under 13s) price for a 30 min introductory lesson (4 to 6 years) has increased from £16 to £20 and individual lessons have gone up from £34 to £38 and higher prices if you want an Advanced instructor or jumping, etc

If you buy 10 vouchers, you still get an additional one free (vouchers are valid for 12 months)

Now you can look at some pics!