Founded in 1982, Dartford Lions Club are one of the founder members of the Arrow Riding Centre. This facility allows therapeutic riding lessons for individuals with special needs. The facility based in East Dartford, needs to raise in excess of £140,000 each year to operate.
The facility, run by Val & Ken Blake, has team of supporters and volunteers who ensure that the the riding lessons for individuals with learning and physical disabilities continues to operate in a smooth manor. In 2018, Arrow Riding Center purchased their own dressage simulator, this allows them to offer indoor training for individuals all year round, the horse (simulator) is named Jeremy.
On average, the centre has approx 140 riders each week who use the facility, some of the users have gone to to win local, national and international tournaments, these are a real boost to the services run by Arrow Riding Centre.
Over the years, the facility has had many visitors, On May 4th 2017 HRH Princess Anne (President of the Riding for the Disabled Association) visited Arrow to celebrate 35 years since the Centre opened. Val and Ken Blake took enormous pride to showing her the facilities and also introducing her to some of the supporters/sponsors of the facility, we are very privileged as two of our Lions members, Lion President Barbara Whitehead and Lion John Whitehead were amongst the group who were introduced to HRH. Lion President Barbara Whitehead said “Princess Anne was very interested in the facility and she praised our Lions Club and other groups who had all contributed in making this facility possible, myself and John both felt honoured to be amongst the handful of guests who has a one-to-one with HRH”.
Dartford Lions Club President (2020), Lion Ragbhir Sandhu said “Having had a long standing relationship with the centre, it gives us enormous pleasure to see how the facility at Arrow Riding has grown. It was founded by the Dartford Lions Club long before I join the club, but I am very well aware that it is a well run and very highly respected facility used by the community covering a large area”.
To date, this facility continues to grow with the support of us and many other similar organisations/individuals, please feel free to contact Arrow Riding Centre directly if you would like to learn more about their amazing facility in Dartford.
Below are just a few photo’s of the centre, but there are many, many more on their website.
