A huge thing to be grateful to our mothers for. I found it inspiring to find that so many of us old Bill Juffs gals are still riding, into our fifties and sixties. One of the riding school instructors was pictured in our chat – on a horse at 99 years old.

That’s why I’m so grateful to my mum for opening up the world of riding while I was still a child and quite fearless.

Palomino was the dream colour – I’m not sure that I’ve ever ridden one! I like a nice dun myself, or a dapple grey.

So interesting, Lyn, that you can perfectly illustrate my point about farmers’ daughters! I envy you the hours spent roaming bareback on Jacky. I think if you’ve had that experience, you do want to take your children to learn to ride.

My mother certainly seemed to like horses, and to admire their beauty, but she had never herself ridden at all.

I do feel validated by the other women on the internet, but more than that is a feeling of contributing to a collective sense of joy. It’s a bit like starting a dance, and everyone joining in. We were each putting our clutch of photos out like a hand of cards.

My mother did watch when we were being taught in a ring, but mostly we were careering round fields on hacks – organised rides – so she must have gone off for solitary walks during that time. She cuts a lonely figure in my imagination. It will have been a sacrifice for her in terms of time and effort, and – more surprisingly, given that we had so little – in terms of money.

The comments by Lyn and Ann cover the class aspect well, I think. It was a puzzling world: who was up, and who was down? Did smart jodhpurs mean you were better, or worse? In one way, horsemanship was a leveller – if you could manage a horse well, then it didn’t matter who you were or where you came from. It was in the latter spirit that we shared our photos, and Bill Juffs certainly treated us all equally. He was a rough diamond himself.

Yes, that’s right: the potential for exploitation was there. And yet, on the other hand, I have read feminist writing about how liberating it was for women to be able to ride – especially having the freedom to roam where you wanted, unchaperoned and unsupervised, wherever you and the horse wanted to go. No-one asked where you were going: you were just exercising the horse.

That is such a poignant story! I’m so sorry about your hat. What an extraordinary thing for your father to be able to do – such horsemanship!

I loved this piece. Your research is so creative and meandering, taking us to all such diverse sources. And I love the mingling of literary quotes, family pictures and pieces of art all woven into the story, which is as ever, a deeply evocative, gripping read.

It is funny how our relationship with horses is class-defining. I envied the wealthier horse-owning girls at my school who went to gymkhanas and point-to-points in the holidays and took lessons in term-time. I still remember the smell of boot polish and horse manure that marked out Saturday mornings as we juniors sat in the basement cleaning our Prefects’ boots in a ghastly mimicry of the boys’ schools’ fagging systems. I left that school before I was old enough to have my own boots cleaned – had I been able to afford the lessons.

My parents, despite being financially challenged from time to time – who needed aircraft engineers in the fifties? – still took me for riding lessons in the school holidays. I envied the girls who lived nearby and managed to stay long enough to do some stable work in exchange for free lessons. They were the elite of the stables marked by their knowledge rather than me, by my splendid jodhpurs and beautiful black velvet silk-lined riding hat – all appearance and no essence. I ruined my hat one year by storing conkers in it, distraught to discover they had all gone mouldy.

One summer my father came riding with me for the first time when I was about 12 years old. The stables were set in the Epping Forest and all rides were through beech/birch woods. As we cantered along my father’s horse decided to try to unseat him, choosing to run under a low branch. My father just jumped off neatly, ran, and jumped back on, all without slowing his mount. I was in awe and asked him where he had learned that feat of horsemanship – parents always know nothing of course. It was my first lesson in family history. My father had grown up on a horse. My grandfather had been a cavalry officer in WW1 and became a career soldier, posted round the world, always with his horse. I still have his 1937 War Office issue ‘Manual of Horsemastership etc’. I remember seeing a little picture of my Dad aged about three, in India, a tiny ram-rod straight figure sitting alone on top of an enormous warhorse, confidently holding the reins. Small wonder that along with my schooling, my grandfather had paid for the riding lessons.

Well yes, but I’m not quite an old dear yet…or if I am, please don’t tell the horses I ride!

The internet does make reminiscing so much easier, and it’s simple to find long-lost pals to do it with. I’ll be returning to the subject, that’s for sure.

I love going back to those days in my mind’s eye, and that photo takes me right there. I am the blonde one, on Strawberry.