Volunteering with RDA at Dukeries Leisure Centre

Volunteering with RDA at Dukeries Leisure Centre

Last Saturday was a quite interesting day, as we volunteered at the RDA centre in Dukeries, Nottinghamshire. The day would be interesting, with a lot of running; I ran like crazy to catch the bus and, after getting wrong instructions, I got off quite earlier, thus having to run through the premises of the university’s hospital (huge hospital, by the way), I finally met the girls. And, of course, we were late.

The route from Nottingham city centre is quite long, about one hour by car. So, while Rowena was driving us to the place, I had plenty of time to gaze around the all-green scenery. The weather was just ideal for equestrian activities. Who said that England is always cloudy, anyway?

About the centre, I didn’t have the chance to see everything. It is quite small, I think, with few horses, but the arena is of a decent size. The atmosphere ie quite cozy as well; I could stay there forever! The centre offers training sessions both for children and adults and I find that quite nice, as adults suffering from disabilities deserve some help too. Also, I was informed that, if the disability is not too severe, adults get a regular training session. Very attractive!

When we arrived at the centre, we were welcomed by Linda, a senior lady around her sixties, who offered us tea, coffee and British goodies! She spoke us about the kids’ summer camp they were organizing and said that they considered freshening up the old tack for the kids to practice. So, our job for the day was to clean and polish that tack.

So we did, joined by two lovely little ladies! I had not cleaned tack before, so that was my chance to learn new things! We finished with the old tack quite fast, so after that we moved to tack that is in use, such as the saddles and some newer bridles.

I don’t remember what time we finished, but I enjoyed every minute of it, even if my nails looked disgusting afterwards!

Here are some nice photos. There would be more if the SD card of my smartphone hadn’t broken! Pff!