Hi everyone and welcome to the December newsletter! Who would have believed we’re in December already in what has been a super weird year! The pic is of Chester, a new purchase we made recently for our more advanced riders to learn on in private lessons – he’s a lovely well-trained horse that has done a lot of dressage and he has a super friendly temperament so do feel free to go and visit him in his stable and say hello!
TIER STATUS We are still currently in tier 2 as we are writing this, with rumour that we will be moving to tier 3 at some point. For clarification, ARC is in the Aberdeen City local authority as opposed to Aberdeenshire (we are around 10 metres inside the city limits). Guidelines permit organised outdoor sport in both Tier 3 and Tier 4 and equestrian is classed as outdoor activity as our covered arenas are not air conditioned and have great ventilation) so the tier status doesn’t affect us hugely as we already have fairly stringent covid precautions in place. For our members, we would urge that you use common sense. If you are coming for a lesson, we are in a very rural area and have precautions in place so travelling to us for your lesson and home again does not increase risk hugely. Riders should however avoid coming to us and then going shopping/visiting family e.t.c. before returning home – this is just good practice and we will keep our social media pages updated with any changes in tier over the next month as normal.
BUSY TIMES
We are currently operating at full capacity at ARC and have put a hold on new riders joining. This will hopefully not be for long, but the combination of our centre covid precautions (with limits on some group numbers) and other riding schools in the area not opening up fully yet, we are experiencing a really high demand, particularly from riders who are new to ARC. We want to be as accessible as possible obviously, but we also want to ensure that current members who have supported the club, particularly through lockdown can still get access and lessons booked. We are currently assessing numbers of members every 2 weeks and will reopen to new riders as soon as we can.
GIFT VOUCHERS
If you are looking for a special Xmas gift, remember that we offer gift vouchers which can be purchased either at reception or by email to lessons@aberdeenridingclub.com
Our gift vouchers are for monetary value rather than specific services, so you can purchase them and then the recipient can use them towards any service we provide – riding lessons (group and private), stable management, livery and devolved BHS assessments or training.
XMAS TREE
Oh yes – its returning again! Ali is currently looking out the tree decorations. As per previous years, if our members would like to buy a wee gift of carrots or polos for the school ponies, they are welcome to bring them along and put them under the tree and then we will make sure the ponies get