Winter Closes In: Hibernating With Carriage Driving Fodder

With colder weather on its way and Christmas coming up, I thought I'd alert you to some reading material.  Any carriage driving enthusiast should read the following historical books: A Manual of Coaching by Fairman Rogers, Driving For Pleasure by Francis T. Underhill, Driving by the Duke of Beaufort, The Private Stable by James Albert Garland and Driving As I Found It by Frank Swales.  All are still as relevant as Shakespeare.  Santa might have to dig a little to find them, but Amazon and ebay are enterprising elves.  Original copies will set you back one to several hundred dollars, but they are all worth holding in your hand.  Reprints are he next best thing, but try not to buy the photocopied paperbacks.  The quality is awful and disrespectful to these grand books.  You can find several of them available for download, which is nice but there is nothing like leafing through the pages of these historical tomes.

For the grandkids, Sue Greenall's Animal Lovers' Bed Time Reader or her latest, Animal Lovers' Bedtime Stories.  These are lovely books to encourage and inspire children to have animals as important elements of their lives.

If it is audio visual material that you need to inspire 2011 carriage driving plans, check out anything by Tim Maloy available for purchase online at: http://www.cavewoodproductions.co.uk/store.html If you aren't familiar with Tim's name, do a search on this blog and view some of his excellent video shorts.  World Four In Hand Championships 2002 from Jarez is available on VHS from Driving Essentials and is excellent.  I have not see the Aachen 2006 Championships yet [ehem, Santa], but I'm sure it is equally as thrilling.  You can order that online through: http://www.aachen2006.de/HighlightDVD_e.htm

Search Amazon.com for carriage driving

Kind Regards,
Michelle Blackler
Serendipity
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