Welcome to the Globetrotter Fell Pony Stud, located in the Eastern Charente of France.
1989 - Globetrotter Robin FP628G
2000 - Globetrotter Mosquito FP51102G
2001 - Globetrotter Nimrod FP51158C
2001 - Globetrotter Nightingale FP3605
2002 - Globetrotter Orion FP51301G
2003 - Globetrotter Polikarpov FP3953
2004 - Globetrotter Quicksilver FP4079
2004 - Globetrotter Quail FP70473G
2007 - Globetrotter Taifun FP
2007 - Globetrotter Traveller FP
2008 - Globetrotter Ultraviolet FP
History about the Globetrotter Stud will be put up here soon.
About Elizabeth Robinson:
I was born in Ireland in 1952 on my father's farm near Letterkenny. Due to his ill health, my father had to give up farming, and we moved to Westmorland in 1958. My earliest memories of horses and ponies start in Ireland. I must have been three or four years old and every day I would watch the milk carthorses on the farm. I thought them beautiful; they had such dignity and patience as they stood in the yard. I could see then that the horses and the men worked together, but it took years of working with my own driving ponies to understand the respect man and horse had for each other, working in partnership.
So when we moved to the English Lakes, I would seek out the local horses and ponies. We first lived near Grasmere, then moved to Kentmere to Bridge End House opposite to the "Marshals", he wrote all the books on Lakeland walks, with those lovely maps. I sought out a pony to ride, he lived up at Kentmere Hall, and the "Blacks" who lived there said I could ride him. I was eight and just had an old bridle for him, and I would sit on his back and walk him about the lanes. Years later Sarge Noble told me that was his stallion Heltondale Prince. From that time, I have always had a love affair with the Lake District, and Fell Ponies. In 1964, we moved south, and lived in Dorset, but I always wanted to buy a Fell Pony. It was not until 1980 that I got my chance.
My partner Mark and I had been renovating a cottage in the late Seventies, and I owned a young Welsh Cob on a rented field. We sold the cottage and bought a smallholding on the Devon/Dorset border. I now had some land to work, and it had to be by 'horsepower'. The Welsh Cob was too 'hot' to be reliable in harness, I had trained him to drive, but he needed 10 miles at a smart trot to make him start thinking about what he was doing! I sold him as a 'long distance riding horse’, which he was very successful at, and started to look for a Registered Fell Pony. There was very little for sale through the Fell Pony Society, just unbroken young stock, and breeding mares. It was a mare that I wanted, but one that had seen some 'life', and broken to harness if possible. I found an advert in the "Horse & Hound", a dealer selling 'driving ponies' in Bradford, and one of them was a Fell Pony. I rang him up and was told she had been hauling coal in Bradford and the best thing was to come and see her. Therefore, I drove up north, to meet "Admergill Ursula". She was in a shed behind the man's house, and was covered in coal dust! Even her teeth were black when I looked at them. We took her for a drive, put to a cart, along a busy main road, she was very good, ears pricked, enjoying herself. She was what I was looking for, I shall never forget the way she looked back at me over her shoulder, as I was leaving her stable, and that was it, the relationship had started. The following week I brought her home, and she has always been with me until this year, she had to be put to sleep last April, she was 28 years. Her stable name was Peggy. She was such a lovely pony, not a show pony, but a working pony, and you name what ponies can do, and she has done it! I have swam with her in the sea, ridden her by moonlight, driven her hundreds of miles, hunted her, lots of shepherding and cattle work, and when I started teaching Carriage Driving she was the star.
My farming partnership came to an end in 1989, and I spent a winter on Dartmoor with my three ponies/horses. Peggy and a Dales mare called Beauty, and "Marty" of carthorse breeding. With the help from friends I rebuilt a 'Horse-drawn caravan, and in the spring took the caravan plus my two daughters and sheepdog across Dorset and into Hampshire to my new job, teaching handicapped children riding at a school near Ringwood.
To be continued ...