A BOLTON schoolgirl has been chosen to ride her Dartmoor pony in The Royal Pageant of the Horse event which will celebrate the Golden Wedding Anniversary of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Lucinda Craven, of Church Street, Ainsworth, will ride 10-year-old gelding Vean Brown Trout - known as "Trouty" - in Windsor Great Park on Sunday.

Lucinda, eight, has been riding since she was two and competes at local and national level with Trouty.

Recently she won the mini-championship in the National Pony Society's Show at Blackburn.

Other successes have been winning the first Mountain and Moorland ridden and mini-championship at the Ponies Uk 1997 show in Peterborough and being supreme Mountain and Moorland Champion at the National Pony Society Area 5 (Lancashire Branch) event and mini-champion at the Cheshire County Show. Trouty has also qualified for Olympia twice.

He has been successful in other top shows, including the Royal Lancashire.

Trouty loves to swim in the sea and Lucinda says he has a very mischievous side.

"He can untie knots and can be difficult to catch," she explained. "He plays up by going round for hours and hours and he eats just about anything, including my Easter eggs!"

Lucinda's mother, Mrs Susan Craven, said the organisers of The Royal Pageant of the Horse got in touch with Dartmoor societies and Lucinda was chosen as a representative. "It's a great honour," she said.

Mrs Nicola Nash of Green Lane, Leigh will be riding her Anglo Arab horse in the pageant.

The pageant will feature more than 1,000 horses and 4,000 people and will tell the story of the horse through the ages.

Celebrity narrators, including Anthony Andrews, Jenny Agutter, Prunella Scales, Bernard Cribbins and Peter O'Sullevan, will guide the audience through seven acts which will be all set to music provided by the Massed Bands of the Household Division and The Bach Choir.

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