Sandhills Farm is set in 150 acres of beautiful Dorset countryside and offers some of the finest facilities in the southwest for training racehorses. Dorset is steeped in horse racing history and with Honeysuckle, Mighty Thunder and Sam Spinner breed 2 miles away there must be something in the air.
5-furlong Woodchip
This gallop was installed in 2020 and has served us well it gets a gentle blow in to the horses, and it is also great for slow work but me personally we would never do quick work on a woodchip gallops. After being laid for 18 months we decided to widen it to 5 meters and can easily work 3 horses up sides each other.
1.5 Furlong Deep Sand Gallops
The deep sand circle was designed and built by Syd and is his pride and joy it can be as shallow as 1” In thickness down to 12” deep if required and this is where we build the grind and grit into our Horses it’s great for both slow andmedium pace work and being 4 meters wide horses can work upsides.
The core work we put in to the Horses early season preparations is done hereand we can get them breathing relaxed and the added advantage is the surface is great for longer periods of work with minimal impact on the joints.
4 Furlong Hill Gallops (Fibre Sand)
This Gallop was installed in 2022 and has a sharp incline and levels of we can preform interval training with the deep sand which builds up stamina and a nice muscular back end on the Horses it is also useful for quicker work.
The Sandhills Loop 9 Furlongs
The loop consists of combing the hill gallop and woodchip together as we often do during the winter months for the staying chasers and Hurdlers, and we are proud to have produce an English Best 4th in the 2023 Cross Country Chase at The Cheltenham Festival with Lieutenant Rocco who homed his talent on the loop.
Consisting of aged old turf on the side of an old hill fort this free draining chalkgrass gallops is 4 furlongs long and is used all year long before a run the key to this gallop is that we only use it before a run to maintain the excellent turf that can only be found on decades of untouched ground.
