About Riding for the Disabled incorporating carriage driving

Riding for the Disabled Association's federation of more than 600 groups throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland dispenses a unique therapy.

Each week well over 25,000 children and adults enjoy the experience of riding or carriage driving - with opportunities to join in social activities, competitions, or to take a holiday - which combine to bring a new dimension to necessarily restricted lives, encourage independence, and do much to improve a wide range of medical conditions.

All this is made possible thanks to the commitment of around 14,000 volunteers, who regularly and cheerfully give up their free time and energy to ensure RDA gives more than 500,000 rides and drives each year.

RDA is dedicated to ensuring that all its riders and drivers receive a high standard of professional tuition tailored to their personal ambitions, and capabilities. Its instructors work closely with physiotherapists and other health professionals to encourage every individual to aim for attainable goals - some modest others far more ambitious.

While competition plays a healthy role in RDA activities - with local, regional, and national competitions in a variety of equestrian disciplines - its focus is to ensure that all riders and drivers derive maximum benefit from a positive and enjoyable form of therapy.

RDA is a "Family" - a unique combination of people and ponies working together and believing that anything (and everything) is possible.

Our history

Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) was established as a registered charity in 1969. It's inspiration, history, and it's concept of disabled people riding for their own well-being goes back centuries to the Greeks. During World War I, riding was provided as a form of therapy to wounded soldiers in an Oxford Hospital.

The inspiration for RDA came from a remarkable lady, Madam Lis Hartel.

Lis, a keen rider, was severely crippled by polio in 1944. It was thought she would not ride again, but against the advise of doctors she again took to the saddle. Initially all she could manage was five minutes sitting on a horse, but perseverance paid off. By 1956 she won the Silver Medal for Dressage in the Helsinki Olympic Games.

Lis's achievements attracted a lot of interest from riders and physiotherapists alike who clearly saw the benefits of riding as a form of physiotherapy.

Elsebet Bodtker of Norway, an international rider and a physiotherapist started to give riding lessons to some of her young patients during the 1950's. She established Ponystallen and by 1964 its lessons were recognised as a treatment on a par with ordinary physiotherapy and funded by the state. She influenced the spread of groups to Great Britain.

During the 1950's, groups started to spring up all over the UK offering riding as a form of therapy. It is thanks to the founders of these early groups: Mrs Strang, Mrs Jacques (founder of Pony Riding for the Disabled), Miss Saywell, Mrs Shaw, Miss Munden and the BHS, and their vision on sharing ideas that the Advisory Council on Riding for the Disabled was established in 1964. In 1969 it became RDA.

Today the charity numbers more than 500 groups providing rides and drives for 24,000 disabled children and adults each year.