F or those who are on the road a lot with their steeds, a common horsebox simply won’t cut it any more. Particularly if you’re a rider like Barbara Hester, with a friend like the interior designer Philippa Thorp, who can custom-make the spiffiest party truck for you, some which reach up to £600,000. Hester, a former investment banker and amateur showjumper competing at 110, the class where fences are more than a metre tall, commissioned Thorp to deliver a design that’s all about comfort.
World-class showjumping is the Formula 1 of horsey sports, taking owners and riders on the road for weeks. The eye-wateringly valuable creatures (top specimens can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds; the most expensive sold for $15 million) are not the only ones that need to be cosseted on the long journeys through Europe — the hypercompetitive humans do too..