Days spent away with Terry were special experiences. We had adventures and laughs, coupled with many hours of unparalleled happiness. Away from home and without the continual disturbances of the training yard it was far easier to relax and chill out; the day-to-day stress factor was removed and we had far fewer differences of opinion. We could rest up and recharge our batteries in preparation for the busy winter racing months ahead.
Our first summers away were usually in Italy. It was, and still is, one of my favourite countries. We both appreciated its beauty, its food and its atmosphere. We never travelled to the same place twice but covered plenty of ground and stayed in some lovely hotels. Places that we visited included the Italian lakes, Positano, Portofino, Sorrento and Venice, plus Taormina in Sicily, where Terry was fascinated by the constant volcanic eruptions of Mount Etna.
Our holiday in Lake Como in 1997 was particularly enjoyable and memorable. We stayed for ten days in a beautiful hotel in Bellagio: the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni. It was there that Terry decided to take me out in a boat into the middle of Lake Como. He told me he had done plenty of rowing when he was younger, although I had my doubts. As the weather was extremely hot, Terry insisted on taking off all his clothes while we were in the boat. This wasn’t particularly unusual – he often seized the opportunity to strip off when it was hot and sunny – but I was horrified when he steered our little boat close to a huge vessel brimming with tourists. I am sure many of the passengers were amazed by the sight. Apart from this incident, we didn’t encounter much traffic on the lake and it was surprisingly calm and peaceful. Terry wanted me to take off all my clothes as well, but I was far too shy, although he did remove my bikini top. I certainly didn’t want to have sex in an Italian rowing boat in the middle of a lake, which was another of his bright ideas. It was a huge relief to me when we finally arrived back at the hotel and he redressed before disembarking.
Venice provided us with another memorable holiday. Terry was fascinated by the city but not that keen on viewing the interiors of many churches. He looked inside a few of the most famous ones, but reckoned that when he had seen one, he had seen them all. However, he was struck by the beauty of St Mark’s Basilica and the amazing statues of the four bronze horses. We took home a huge photographic print of these horses and it is now framed and hanging on the wall on the staircase at West Lockinge farm. He was also intrigued by the prisons close to the Bridge of Sighs and couldn’t believe that prisoners had managed to stay alive in such dark, dingy and miserable little cells. They looked like torture chambers.
*
During one summer, a most generous owner, Val McCalla, treated Terry and me to a few days in Paris. I had spent four months there when I was sixteen, close to the Arc de Triomphe, in order to improve my French. During Terry’s heyday, he had apparently enjoyed the company of a rich Parisian girlfriend, so neither of us were strangers to this amazing city. But when I suggested we make a visit to the Musée d’Orsay to look at the Impressionist paintings, there was a definite lack of enthusiasm. Surprisingly, however, Terry thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the gallery, and on our return to Lockinge decided that he would produce his own version of Claude Monet’s famous poppy field – the champs de coquelicots.
It was a hot summer’s day and we went for a drive in my old Subaru up the lane at the back of the farm. Terry was at the wheel. From the top of our gallops, he had spotted a cornfield, red with poppies, on the Lockinge Estate close to the point-to-point course. Terry decided to shock me. We drew level with the poppy field and he picked up my camera from the back seat of the car. Then he asked me to walk into the middle of the field and strip off from the waist upwards. Doubled up with laughter, he photographed me, semi-naked among the poppies. The resultant pictures were hilarious, and Terry kept saying, ‘Who needs Monet when I can create my own version of his painting?’ Sheepishly and with some embarrassment, I took the film to be developed at Boots in Wantage. On collection of the photographs, it was a relief to find that there were no adverse comments. I have kept the pictures well hidden in a special drawer ever since.
*
After a number of enjoyable holidays in Italy during the 1990s, we then switched to Ireland for our summer breaks, due to a deterioration in Terry’s health. In the late nineties he had suffered a series of heart fibrillations and had been prescribed warfarin. He found that one of the side effects of this drug was that he could no longer enjoy the hot sun. His body overheated and he felt claustrophobic. It is never too hot in Ireland and many beautiful places there are totally unconnected with horses. Terry always enjoyed fishing and pottering around the countryside. He also fully appreciated the breathtaking scenery at our chosen destinations.
In the summer of 1990, after a tiring few days at the Tattersalls Derby Sale, we travelled at the end of June to Sheen Falls Hotel in Co. Kerry. It is a fantastic hotel, overlooking the Sheen Waterfalls in Kenmare. We much enjoyed our days there and dined out at a number of little restaurants in the town, but it was the fishing Terry most enjoyed. Fortunately the hotel staff were extremely tolerant of his ‘unusual methods’.
It was always tantalizing to look over the bridge on the road beside the hotel and see large numbers of salmon lying on the gravel bed beneath, but although these fish ventured down the river, they proved extremely difficult to lure onto fishing lines. Terry would stand on the riverbank with his rod and cast into the water. He attached purple and red dried prawns to his hooks but the fish wouldn’t take a bite. On one occasion, in desperation he added sausages, chunks of bacon and pieces of bread, but still no joy.
I remember him hurling his line into the river and accidently letting it go. Everything became tangled in an overhanging tree branch, but Terry was unperturbed. He went back to our hotel room and brought out a window pole, which had a hook on the end and was used to close high windows. He poked around the tree and tried to dislodge his rod and the fish hook, but the pole got stuck on the branch as well. Everything, including the window pole, was now dangling over the water. I was so embarrassed that I pretended Terry was nothing to do with me when a knowledgeable and disapproving fellow fisherman walked by. So many times I would say to Terry, ‘You can’t do that.’ to which he replied, ‘I can do what I like and nobody will stop me.’ This was his life’s motto. On this occasion, a ghillie did eventually sort out the chaos. He even smiled and Terry gave him twenty euros. Nobody else would have got off so lightly, but Terry always managed to extricate himself from difficult situations. He just laughed and others laughed with him. Who else could regularly park their car in Wantage on a double-yellow line, then give the traffic warden a hug when she came along to report him? He never got a single fine.
*
We did not always have our holidays alone; occasionally we were joined by friends. When we stayed at Sheen Falls Hotel, two smashing owners, Hector and Pam Brown, drove to Co. Kerry to meet us.
Hector remembers the stay as just one long laugh from start to finish. ‘An outing on the hotel croquet lawn revealed that Terry was a dab hand, not only at the game itself, but also at making the rules up as we went along,’ he says. ‘We should have suspected something, as just before the bully off, he said to me in a typical theatrical whisper, “Usual side stake, Hector?” There followed a series of double hits, a mysterious movement of hoops and free kicks “sans mallet”, but remarkably Pam and I just about managed to lay up with the Biddlecombes. The final coup de grâce came from an unexpected quarter. At Sheen Falls the croquet lawn effectively doubles as a helipad, and just as I was about to play the stroke that would have put Terry’s ball on its way to Dingle, the hall porter appeared, quickly followed by a helicopter bringing Ronan Keating and his new bride from Dublin on honeymoon. “Match abandoned!” shouts our self-appointed umpire. “Bets to be settled on the positions at the time of abandonment!” The T. W. B. cackle burst forth as I handed over the crinklies.
‘We got a little bit of our own back in the clay-pigeon shooting the following day. Terr
y excelled at this sport and proceeded to show us how it was done in the early rounds. However, Hen stuck with him and things came to a head with the final traps, when the clays were thrown high and at an awkward angle. Terry shot first and missed one of his clays; Hen followed and hit both of hers. I cannot repeat what he said, but he was very gracious and produced the champagne later in the day.
‘He hadn’t really got over this setback when he drove us down the coast in the pouring rain the following day on a trip to some exotic gardens on an island just off shore. Clearly for T. W. B. this was the trip from hell, but his interest in everything animal came to our rescue when he spotted a colony of seals on some rocks and immediately perked up. In true Terry style, he persuaded the boatman to slow down and get as close to the seals as possible so that he could carry out a detailed inspection. After that, the day just went downhill and ended with us all getting soaked in the gardens. There are photographs to prove it.
‘Our final challenge at Sheen Falls came on the nearby river, which we understood to be well stocked with salmon and trout. We found two places where the fish seemed to be active and perfected our casting such that we could plop the bait down almost on a sixpence. Terry was very excited by the prospect of catching fish and was casting his line in a most determined way. Unfortunately, by lunchtime not one of us had had so much as a bite and spirits were beginning to sink a little.
‘However, the thirst for the fight was rekindled when we went in to lunch and en route were shown a large fish that another guest had supposedly caught that morning. Terry’s grit and determination were instantly fired up again, and from then on he spent every free moment pursuing the elusive prey. In fact, the Biddlecombes stayed on for two more days to enable him to complete this “old man and the sea” saga. We never heard the final score, but often wondered who would plant the catch of the day in such a place that every frustrated angler returning from a fruitless outing would take the bait and go back for more of it. Couldn’t have been Terry, but it is just the sort of thing that he would have revelled in doing, particularly if he got a reaction.’
*
From 2002 onwards, we began to visit Connemara for all of our holidays, and this proved to be the place that Terry and I enjoyed more than anywhere else. We became hooked on its magical powers, and our weeks spent in that quarter of Co. Galway, nestled close to the Atlantic Ocean, were unforgettable. It became our second home; there was nowhere else we wanted to go and we were hypnotised by the place. We fell in love with the countryside and we fell in love with its people. The beautiful, constantly changing scenery has to be seen to be believed. No two days are ever the same and the light changes wherever one looks. We went for many drives admiring the coastline, the mountains and the lakes. It was like being on another planet.
Terry particularly enjoyed our visits to Leenane, alongside Killary Harbour. It was here, in this tiny village, that the film The Field was made. It featured Sir John Hurt, who was a good friend of Terry’s and with whom he had worked on the making of Champions, the story of Aldaniti and Bob Champion winning the Grand National. John Hurt’s girlfriend had been killed while riding a horse, but John still wanted to do the film. Terry taught him so much about riding that he was personally able to appear on a horse in many parts of the film. Terry and John complemented each other famously. Bob Hall – Central Television’s sports presenter in 1982 and freelance journalist – remembers going to Cheltenham during the making of the film.
‘Terry continually reminded me that John should be treated with kid gloves, because he was in a delicate state having lost his soulmate, but on one day, after half an hour at the racecourse, Terry had had enough of waiting. He marched over to John’s caravan and banged on the door. Moments later, John Hurt’s face emerged at an open window. “Oi, John! Get your fucking arse out here! We’re waiting to get this filming done.” I doubled up with laughter: kid gloves, eh? But oh so typical – so Terry. Even John Hurt saw the funny side as it suddenly dawned on Terry what he had said and done.’
*
During our holidays in Connemara we met some amazing people – they mostly lived close to the town of Clifden, on the edge of the Atlantic, and it was there that we spent some of the happiest days of our years together. Ballynahinch Castle Hotel, which overlooks the famous Ballynahinch River and is surrounded by mountains and woodlands, ranks as my favourite place in the world. From day one, Terry and I were charmed by its beauty and tranquillity. We both got excited for days on end when we knew we were travelling over there for a holiday.
One of Terry’s greatest mates in Connemara was Cyril Biggins, the ghillie who used to take him fishing on that beautiful Ballynahinch River, with its stunning and peaceful beats. As well as being an expert fisherman, Cyril is also a racing fan and is often to be seen at Cheltenham. He and Terry had plenty in common, though I often wonder how much serious fishing was done. Many a time I would find them watching races in the betting shops in Clifden. Terry never caught a salmon, despite having a lifelong ambition to do so. Apparently, he once had a large fish on his line, but he and Cyril lost it before it was landed on the bank.
I often left the pair of them chatting and fishing beside the river while I visited the numerous Connemara pony breeders in the area. At home in England, I have a small stud of these ponies inherited from my mother, and it was probably my desire to learn more about the breed and its unique history that made Terry and me travel to Galway to see these special animals in their native land. Also, our friends in Connemara own some beautiful ponies. They taught us a huge amount about conformation and pedigrees.
Four of them made a special journey to England in 2014 for Terry’s funeral – Ciaran and Gearoid Curran, Padraic Hynes and Henry O’Toole. I was immensely touched. Our pony friends could never believe Terry’s stories of life in the fast lane when he was young.
Emer McNamara, who is one of the secretaries to the Connemara Pony Breeders’ Society, always enjoyed racing. Together with her father, Joe, who stood many good Connemara stallions, they trained a number of horses for ‘flapping’ races (unlicensed meetings). Emer spent several weeks at Lockinge and we took her racing with us. Terry thought the world of her and she rode beautifully on the gallops. He used to tell her she was wasting her life in Connemara and that she should make a career in the racing world in England.
In 2014, Henry O’Toole, who is a noted breeder, told me: ‘A photo of Terry, taken during one of his many visits to Ballynahinch still sits on our kitchen dresser. It is a reminder of the character that we came to respect and love over many years. We never knew the legendary “Blond Bomber” of the glory days, but over the time that we got to know him, his stories gave us a glimpse of the colourful life that he had led in his earlier years. It was Hen’s passion for Connemara ponies that first brought them to our home one spring on a Sunday morning…. It was to be the first of many such visits, each of them full of fun and laughter, as well as serious horse and pony talk. That day, one of the children had broken the lavatory seat and there was consternation when our lady visitor asked to use the bathroom. Terry was not in the slightest bit concerned. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will cool her arse.”’
I still go back to Connemara, even now that Terry’s gone. It is the only place in the world that I feel secure and totally at ease. There is no pressure, no hassle and the slow day-to-day pace of life over there is special. One never feels forced to do anything.
There is no stress, just one day at a time, but I miss sharing its magic with Terry dreadfully and there are plenty of poignant moments when I visit our old haunts. It makes me both happy and sad. I am often tearful, but I never want to lose my memories or my friendships with its wonderful people. To visit Connemara is like venturing into another land. A unique unspoilt corner of the planet. From the first time I ever went there I felt it had stolen my soul away.
CHAPTER NINE
A Crack Shot
Terry always enjoyed shooting. He met some wonderful people duri
ng his days out on shoots. Despite living in the heart of the Ledbury hunting country in Herefordshire, he always preferred to go off with his gun rather then tidy himself up and attend a nearby meet. When he went shooting, he could switch off from horses and racing. When out hunting however, members of the field flocked around him, questioning him about the races in which he had ridden in. ‘Why didn’t you win on my friend’s horse at Chepstow?’ ‘Which horses do you think will win at Cheltenham in March?’ The questions were endless. There was never any peace nor time to relax.
Apparently, it was Terry’s grandfather, Bert Biddlecombe, who first took him out shooting. ‘He had his old twelve-bore and I had my little .410 side by side,’ Terry said. ‘We’d go off pigeon shooting in the lower woods. I loved it. I could only have been seven or eight then. One morning during a walk around the fields, Grandad spotted a rabbit. He handed me his old egg hammer gun and asked me if I would like a shot. The kick it gave nearly sent me back through the hedge, but I killed the rabbit.’
However, Terry would never shoot a stag. He considered deer to be majestic and beautiful, so he never went stalking. He put hares into the same category. He watched many of these creatures in the grass fields beside the gallops. He regarded them as sacred.
Fortunately, during his time at West Lockinge he still enjoyed pheasant and grouse shoots and, of course, would constantly try to get rid of the rabbits on our schooling ground. They did unbelievable damage, not only burrowing into the soil and making holes for horses to put their feet into, but also getting into the fences and ruining the birch.
In the years I spent with Terry, I never wanted to spoil his love for shooting, but I seldom accompanied him on a shoot, which disappointed him. I’d spent many years as a child on shoots with my father, who the Shooting Gazette’s John Neville once described as, ‘The finest pheasant shot that I have ever known.’ Dad was certainly a brilliant shot and the envy of many. When I stood beside him during a drive, he seldom missed a bird. He had the most unbelievable eye, but because he died on a shoot, I always had a strange feeling about ever going to shoots again. Indeed, I often worried about Terry and prayed that his heart and health would stand up to a testing day with his gun.
Not Enough Time Page 10