Two Lanarkshire equestrians from have taken the reins to organise an event raising awareness of incidences of dangerous driving around horses.
Julie Cameron, from Law, and her friend Kat Stark, from Shotts, along with a group of other riders will take part in the nationwide Pass, Wide and Slow ride out event taking place across the UK next month.
Julie said: “I regularly ride my horse Jack solo or in a group, around Newmains, Morningside, Bonkle and Allanton.
“Over the years both myself and my friends have experienced an unbelievably large number of irresponsible, abusive and dangerous car drivers when passing our horses. We’ve had to get the police involved due to a local driver deliberately driving towards us and shoving our horses into a fence while shouting verbal abuse out his window to us.”
Julie and Kat became aware of a Facebook equestrian group whose aim is educate drivers on how and why to pass horses, and support riders and to be kind. The two noticed that their UK-wide ride out event didn’t have anyone organising in the ML area of Lanarkshire and decided they would saddle up and lead the way.
Julie explained: “It was Kat who first talked about it, and we looked into it. There was a map of Britain divided into different areas and the ML area was free. We toyed with the idea and decided that there were so many people we know who have had incidents with drivers that it's ridiculous, so we just thought, ‘Come on, let’s do this’.
“We just want to make people aware of how to pass horse riders safely. Nearly every ride we got out on there is some idiot on the road who puts us or a horse in danger. My stirrups have had a few near misses with wing mirrors because people are driving so close. I take my niece out and I have my heart in my mouth at times.
“And there are a lot of younger horses going out as well that are not as experienced as ours are, we really need drivers to realise.
“The event was all organised for last year and it was cancelled because of Covid, so we organised it for earlier this year but it was cancelled again. This is third time lucky for us.”
There are currently 186 localised events taking place across the UK and another in the United States.
The ML event already has around 20 riders attending the awareness event along with a number of dog walkers.
Police officers will be among those accompanying the riders during the awareness event which starts at 11am on Sunday, September 19 beginning in Morningside and following a route through Bonkle and Newmains.
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