I CAN report that the month of May was dry, however not as dry as in 2020 when just 17mm of rain fell but not much wetter, with 27mm being recorded at Pond House.

Our running total of rainfall for 2025 now stands at 345mm and we are nearly 320mm behind the same period last year. However we do need some rain, but the sunshine has been lovely!

The horses have enjoyed a great first month to their summer holidays and on their second weigh in, they are putting on a nice amount of weight. Time passes quickly however and it will not be too long until we will be bringing them back in and the process starts all over again!

The staff are being kept busy with ‘summer jobs’ such as steam cleaning, painting and tidying while plenty are making use of the quieter period to have their own holidays.

We have just a small team of horses to run at the moment and Old Bridge unfortunately was his own worst enemy when running at Stratford on Saturday. First Lord Du Cuet travelled up to Cartmel for the hunter chase last week but finished unplaced.

Our first runners of the week are likely to be on Thursday at the earliest. Jaipaletemps, Micronormous and Kintaro all have entries at Ffos Las with Micronormous also having an entry at Uttoxeter on the same day.

Mancero could make his Pond House debut in the first juvenile hurdle race of the season at Hexham on Saturday. He won his only career start to date over hurdles at Fontainebleau in April after which we claimed him. We are likely to have entries at Worcester as well at the weekend so keep checking the Daily News section of the website for all the latest information.

We had our final runner of the 2024-25 point-to-point season at Bratton Down on Sunday. Royal Defender saved his best run of the season to finish second under champion Devon and Cornwall lady rider, Jo Supple.

Rian Corcoran finishes the season as National Champion Novice Gentleman point-to-point jockey as well as winning the Devon and Cornwall and Wessex area titles. At just seventeen years old he is a name to follow going forwards.

It has been a successful point-to-point season for our little team with four winners on the board. Rian Corcoran rode all of our winners but that was simply the luck of the draw with Martin McIntyre also riding a fair share of our runners to numerous placings before he was unfortunately side lined by a fall at Ludlow.

Martin McIntyre continues to remain off work and not be able to ride and recent x-rays have shown he has not healed as well as they hoped. He will be off for a few more weeks.

Unfortunately, it is not such good news for conditional jockey Gearoid Harney who suffered a head injury when coming down at Fakenham in January. He will undergo further tests to see if he is allowed to ride out again in a licensed stable yard and once these tests have been completed, Gearoid will know more about his plans.

Both Martin and Gearoid remain in good spirits and are in regular contact and are receiving great care and support from the Injured Jockeys Fund.

Dave Pipe column as told to Richard Walsh