More About Claire
Claire Lilley has been teaching riding both overseas and in the UK for over thirty years She offers classical tuition for both horse and rider from novice to advanced levels in dressage and jumping.
Claire believes that training should be enjoyable for everyone to achieve their goals and takes a sympathetic approach to training horse and rider and has been teaching for thirty years. She values the importance of lungeing and in-hand work in every horse’s schooling. Claire specialises in ‘fine-tuning’ the rider’s seat to get the best from the horse.
After completing her British Horse Society exams, Claire received extensive training for five years in Germany, working her way up from passing her Bronze Abzeichen to second show jumping rider at a jumping yard, and then spending two years training as a Bereiter, riding several horses up to Grand Prix dressage and grade A show jumping.. She taught quadrille riding, show jumping and dressage, and trained many young horses for competition, which she competed on herself, as well as doing remedial work with problem horses.
Claire competes regularly on her own horses, that she has backed and trained herself, from Novice level to Grand Prix.
Here she is with Heinrich competing at Novice level
Heinrich three years later learning piaffe
Claire has trained with Arthur Kottas for the last twelve years at the Teachers of Tomorrow Trust in Guildford, Surrey. Previous trainers include Sylvia Loch (eight years), and occasional help from Jennie Loriston-Clarke.
Fine-tuning from Arthur in a lesson!
Other career highlights;
Claire is a qualified fitness trainer concentrating on good posture with The Fitness League, (www.thefitnessleague.com) and a member of the Register of Exercise Professionals under her married name, Claire Ballardie.
Here Claire puts her Swedish students attending a clinic through their paces after breakfast, correcting their posture and suppleness before they all go out to ride. It is just as important for the riders to loosen up as it is for the horses!
Chief Instructor and Yard Manager of Orchard Cottage Riding School in Surrey, which was voted Riding School of the Year during her time there.
A freelance trainer and author, Claire is a regular contributor to equestrian magazines and has written several books.
Translator of equestrian books from German to English.
Listed dressage judge Claire also judges dressage competitions locally and finds that it is a great responsibility to send each rider home with a score sheet that makes sense, and helps each competitor to improve on their training for next time.
Here is Dangerous Liason (Norman) at his third dressage outing with Claire
Here is Claire with her Grand Prix horse Amadeus in the Mary Poppins Quadrille which reached third place at the Quadrille final at Olympia in 2000
Riding as a group in a Quadrille is all part of the fun. Dressage to music is a popular request at clinics and at Claire’s yard.
A quadrille team in Sweden after a great afternoon!
Claire Lilley
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The Team
Administrator Dougald Ballardie
Dougald (Claire’s husband) keeps the office work under control, – you may get him on the other end of the phone when you ring us. After a long career as a financial director, his expertise is invaluable in developing our company for the future.
He is also kept very busy at the yard, doing all the jobs we are incapable of doing! His practical side comes to the fore when it comes to re-designing the yard to maximise its efficiency (and ours!) and gets him away from the computer for a while.
The Yard Staff
Jo and Bridget are highly skilled trainers and teachers that help Claire to care for and train all the horses in the yard, including keeping the schoolmasters up to scratch.
Jo jumping Trevor
Jo riding latest addition to the schoolmaster team- Bumble
The Animals
Sammy the standard poodle is 5 years old and loves to be involved in everything we do.
Sammys Pedigree (The Importance of being Ernest) :
Bagpuss is chief mouser (retired!) and patrols the yard diligently in return for a bit of TLC. He has been joined by new stable cat Dee who is four years old and taken over as champion mouser now that Baggy has retired himself. He follows Dee around, trying to take all the credit for what she does and spends most of the day sleeping!
New cat Dee
We will be out and about to shows and demonstrations in our lorry which has been custom built for us by champion horse boxes, so look out for us and come and say hello.
Claire is sponsored by horsedata.biz