SWLNhorse – by Filipa Gaspar
A woman who started horse riding before she could walk is still in the saddle – aged 100.
Great-gran Elizabeth Breton says she has no plans to give up riding despite her recent milestone – as ‘it is in her DNA’.
Born in 1924, Ms Breton remembers being “popped on a pony” by her father before she could even walk.
Elizabeth spent 30 years out of the saddle before returning to the sport in her 70s – going on to ride competitively for a number of years.
Ms Breton, from Cirencester in Gloucestershire, celebrated her 100th birthday in December.
She explained she doesn’t plan to stop her twice a week visits to Cotswolds Riding at Jill Carenza Equestrian in Stanton.
She said: “I have been riding since I was two – for 98 years.
”I could ride rather confidentially by the time I was six – I must have started before I could walk really.
“It just feels right in every department. I feel it right up through my body and I love horses.
“I like dogs – I had one very special dog – but I do feel a connection with horses.”
Ms Breton, who grew up near Lincoln in a rural property with a stable yard, was able to ride competently at the age of six and previously used to ride on a daily basis.
Riding Snowflake was one of her earliest memories on horseback.
She said: “My father was a farmer and in the early days of the 20th century if you didn’t ride and you didn’t hunt you had no social life.
”You couldn’t go our to an evening meal without carriages and horses so it was a very different scene to the one today.
“They used to say when I was a young girl that you had to fall off 90 times before you could ride – part of riding is falling off.
“And I must have learnt how to fall because I do know how to fall – I don’t want to put it to the test but I should probably cope.”
She gave it up for 30 years as an adult after a “tragedy” happened with two of her horses.
But returned to the pursuit when she was 70 when her son invited her to ride his horse.
Ms Breton said: “We had two awful tragedies with horses.
”I lost two horses – one broke a leg and the other produced a bad heart so we had to put him down and it broke my heart really so I didn’t bother anymore.
“My son kept having horsing girlfri and they persuaded him to buy one horse one day so then he asked his mother if she would like to come and ride it.
“So I got going in and it took me about three months riding twice a week to get the feel of it again – I feel at home on a horse.
“Despite giving up for 30 years I am not worn out. It is in my DNA.”
She went back into competing in her late 70s – and even won a cross-country championship class aged 78.
Although she does not ride competitively anymore, she still looks forward to her hacks around the village of Stanton twice a week.
She said: “I think once a week would be barely enough – twice a week keeps you up together. I don’t know how much longer I have got.
“There are people who enjoy me being around because sometimes I think I am quite ready to go.”
