Dust PR – Barbour Polo Day

Barbour Polo Day

July 20, 2011 by lucydust

Thursday, 14 July saw the occasion of Barbour’s second annual ‘learn to play polo’ day which took place at the rather splendid newly opened hotel Cowarth Park near Ascot.

An intimate affair put on to reconnect the dots between Barbour’s country heritage, their sponsorship of the Household Cavalry’s polo team and their friends in the fashion world, we were joined by 12 adventurous Barbour loving up for it smiley faces on a rare sunny day!

Actually we have to acknowledge the part the sun played in making the day so great. As we turned into Cowarth’s drive, we were greeted by a meadow of stunning wild flowers and the sun shone as though someone had literally flicked on a switch. How could we fail to have an outstanding day?

Lead through the hotel and down through formal gardens to the a wide open grassy space with an enormous polo field framed by glorious trees on three sides several gasped ‘oh my god its huge’. Those who hadn’t played polo before clearly hadn’t anticipated the football size pitch gravity of the situation!

Under a gazebo we were greeted by fresh coffee, pastries and juice. Once refreshed we were gathered for a briefing, then allocated our teams, our colour coded Barbour polo shirts and our assigned polo coach. My own team featured two riders (the completely up for it fun loving Jane Taylor Hayhurst and the equally up for it ‘I’m very competitive actually’ Richard Gibb) and two relative novices (myself and the lovely Teo from Esquire).

We made acquaintance with our mallets and trained firstly on foot and then astride huge wooden practice horses before being set loose on the real thing.

As we were in ‘team 3’ we didn’t have the luxury of some ‘getting to know you’ time with our horses – we were straight into a live, albeit, relatively pedestrian, chukka! Thanks to the skills of Jane and Richard we managed to ‘win’ first our game and stayed on to play the previous winners. At this stage we were face to face with a team of polo hustlers in the shape of Patrick Grant of E. Tautz, Poppy Tullo of Quintessentially TV and Barbour’s very own Marketing Director, Gary Burnand whose team were the overall winners of the day. To wrap up the fun we played some mallet skill games including a polo version of ‘keepie uppie’ and who can wack the ball the furthest.

Finally we ended the day with a tasty barbeque buffet lunch (and surprise treat for birthday girl Sinead) served in the open air to a backdrop of the pros playing a proper match between Barbour’s team versus visiting team Jacaranda from Ascot Park and to squeeze in time to view a selection of key pieces from Barbour’s Steve McQueen, Alice Temperley for Barbour Gold Label and To’kito collections.

Back on the coach everyone was fuelled with adrenalin from a genuinely fantastic and unique experience – all credit to Sue Newton at Barbour for putting together such a considered and seamlessly produced event.