It was an honour to be chosen to pay tribute to the horses and soldiers of WW1 at this year’s Royal Cornwall Show.   As it’s the centenary year of the end of The Great War, and with many of our riders having family who served during the war, we wanted to pay tribute to these horses, men and women in a main arena act unique to this year.

We love performing to such large audiences as the atmosphere was incredible and our riders and horses all thoroughly enjoyed performing for everyone.  With such a great team and camaraderie we even added extra sections to the show and tailored our performances so that our General and his soldiers could perform a special salute to the Royal Box and even exit on a flying high!

With our displays being both epic and emotional we thank the lovely members of the public who came to meet us afterwards to tell us their stories of their past generations who fought in the war.  One lady still had the stirrups from the saddle that her Grandfather used at the front, while another told us about her great-grandfather who served in the artillery.

We learnt also about the women who contributed to the war efforts from the lovely ladies at The SideSaddle Association who explained about the role of women as first aiders and messengers during the war.  Did you also know that women would have trained the horses at home so that they were ready to be sent to the front, as most of the men were already on the front line.

Standing in the middle of the arena with our horses and riders thundering past with swords drawn for the final cavalry charge, our last performance was particularly emotional as the minute silence was broken by a large cheer and round of applause from the audience and all the horses and riders were presented with rosettes from the president of the association.

It’s been a long-standing dream of Marc Lovatt and our Cavalry team to honour those that fought in the first world war and we were so pleased to be able to present this at the prestigious Royal Cornwall Show.

Our horses were all excellent boys across the weekend and really enjoyed themselves, having fun in the arena.  We had all eight horses with us which is a pleasure as they all get on with each other and we love having them with us.  They made lots of new friends with the showjumpers, heavy horses and miniatures that were all stabled nearby, and lots of new human friends with Guinness stealing a lot of hearts, and Asgard, D’artagnan and Zorro flying the flag for the beautiful Friesian breed.

There was a fun backstage competition running this weekend as well which involved a grand prize of the first round of drinks being bought if the riders could all hit their targets at a very difficult charge during tent pegging!  Incredibly they came so close on each occasion and we all thought that it was a sure thing in the last show but the target fell off last second!  The prize therefore still up for grabs by our riders for our next WW1: Horses and Heroes show, which will be in Brockwell Park, London, for the Lambeth Country Show.

You may also have heard our Riders being interviewed for BBC Radio Cornwall by Julie Skentelbery, presenter of the Breakfast Show on the Friday morning! Our riders were fully dressed in their uniforms and answering questions about what it must have been like to be a soldier during WW1.

Thank you to the organisers, stewards and volunteers of The Royal Cornwall Show, who’s organisation and friendliness made our visit very special and we would particularly like to thank the Show Secretary Mr Chris Riddle, Main Arena Stewards including Roger and the team in the commentary box for their wonderful introductions and publicity of our performances across the weekend.

Having a relatively quiet week now as the horses get some well-deserved rest in their fields, enjoying the sunshine, before we make our way to Sudeley Castle for some Medieval Jousting in honour of Father’s Day on Sunday 17th June 2018.

If you want to follow the adventures of The Cavalry of Heroes and not miss out on a single dramatic moment then head over to our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages and give us a like and a follow for behind the scenes footage, training and in-team jests!

You can also follow this blog by clicking Follow below and see our other Past Performances here.

Also, take a look at NRS Photography, who we had the pleasure of meeting at the weekend and who’s featured image is at the top (thank you Neil) and Swain Photography as they have both captured some truly fantastic shots of our Joust, some of which you can see here.

For Event Organisers: if you would like to book us for your event please take a look at the shows we have available and contact us, either by our web-form, or phone or email and we’d be happy to chat through options with you.

From all the team at The Cavalry of Heroes, have an epic rest of the day and stay warm!

The Cavalry of Heroes xx