August Story Contest

Kelly's Trip
By: TGG
Age: 12

     I looked out of the window of the school bus; all she could she was exactly the same thing she saw half an hour ago, black clouds, rain and yet even more grey boring roads. But it would be worth it as all the annual whole school ‘surprise’ trips were supposed to be except they never were. It was the beach, the zoo or some other boring place where she had been loads of times before but this time her teacher had assured her that she would love it but Mrs Danne always said that to at least one person in the class.  The fact that it was me this year had got my hopes up for a brilliant new place which the school had probably racked their brains for hours to come up with. I sighed hoping for more than just more road as I looked out the blurry window which

Tom was wiping frantically at in the seat behind me, ‘uh first years’ I thought. I closed my eyes and daydreamed that I was with Saffron, my pony; we were cantering down the river bank going past large clumps of baby bunnies that were fast asleep on soft banks of lush green grass. I imagined that we jumped the huge cross country jump, which my dad had put up for me  but was much too high at least 3ft we then sped off down the grassy track towards all of the pretty mares that were kept on the other side of the river. Saffron nickered to one of the foals it whinnied back and then, with a long run up, leaped over the river landing neatly next Saffron before looking back at its mother, she wasn’t very pretty like the others but she had so much love in her expression that the foal jumped back over the river. I smiled but then Saffron bucked sending me flying into the boggy, muddy, smelly river; but before I could reach the surface of the water I was brought back into the real world by a horrible smell.
     

“Kelly, wake up we’re nearly there,” whispered Mrs Danne who was crouching down next to my row smelling salts in hand looking desperate.  “I hope you enjoyed your sleep but we’ve only got a minute until we arrive.” I sat up from a  slump in my seat to look out of the window hoping once again to see more that just grey road and grey sky, in fact what she saw was amazing even scary. What she saw was fields and fields of horses, riding tracks, huge stables and most importantly a race course. She knew where they were, the centre of England’s racing community; where racing kings were born and millions of horses trained for hours to win all of their races to become a champion of speed.

The school bus turned in at one of the studs but this one was protected by large metal walls protecting the horses inside which probably cost millions of pounds. The school bus went into the stud through some large metal gates; the metal had been bent into the shape of two bay horses racing side by side and in front of them was the finishing post, a white pole with a red ring on top of it. The gate opened automatically to reveal a string of young thoroughbreds prancing around waiting for their go on the training track; one of the was on the starting line next to a young lady with a sour face holding a timer I knew that this was serious; the lady shouted something and then the horse set off at a fast gallop and only slowing down to stop at the end; the lady whooped and shouted the time gleefully to the rider.

Nobody else on the whole bus had noticed it because they were all going aw at the tiny foals next to their mothers in the fields staring at the bus as if it was an alien invading their yard. Suddenly one of the foals cantered over to the fence bucking and circling every few meters all of the people in the bus leaned over to see the foal and all the younger children shouted and all the older children shouted at them; it was too much for the foal as they were all shouting so loudly that it could hear. By now the bus had gone past the all the foals and mares in their fields and we were getting nearer to the huge red barn that loomed at the top of the hill; everyone was shouting and peering through the windows.

I couldn’t help notice that I was the only one who saw the old mare in the field next to them, feet turned in, cow hocks, parrot mouth, ewe’s neck but she was the most scarred horse she had ever seen in fact she recognised this horse it was Wistery Pal a very famous race horse. Nobody else on the bus realised this but seeing her had made my day; I don’t care about all of the cute foals or the speedy stallions all I wish is that everyone else could understand that it doesn’t matter what you look like it’s what you are.