Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2007 | Page 78
life
EQUESTRIAN
Karen Ledger,
the realistic optimist.
Karen Ledger is her own person, with an overriding love – some
might call it an obsession - for dogs and horses. Four marriages
and 20 years of competing at the Horse of the Year Show have
not dimmed Karen’s enthusiasm for life. Now, with eight dogs
and husband number four, Karen Ledger’s life is complete.
Born in 1951, Karen is an only child
who was raised in a semi-detached
house in Lancashire. Her achievement
at school was average. Most of her
time at school was spent thinking about
riding her pony at the weekends.
At 16 Karen moved with her parents to
Africa where her father had been loaned
to the East African Government. Her
parents were based in East Africa for an
extended period, but after only two years,
Karen was itching to get back to England.
She returned, two years later, to the
seaside town of Southport where she
married and had two children, both of
which tragically died at an early age.
After this appalling blow Karen and
her husband adopted a child, but the
marriage fell apart. “At the time, the
strain was immense and unfortunately
we ended up divorced,” she explains.
Karen bought a petrol station with the
proceeds of the house she had shared
with her husband, and managed it during
the petrol war of 1972. It was an exciting
and lucrative time and when the petrol firm
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finally took over, she opened a saddlery
shop. She married again, and gave birth
to Ryan and Dale, taking up riding more
seriously again. The saddlery business was
sold and the family moved to a house in the
country and ran a livery yard for hunters,
where she had a very interesting client.
The following story belongs to Karen:
“We had this chap who kept his hunter at
our yard called Roy Grimshaw, who was
always referred to as ‘doctor’, so everyone
assumed that he was a doctor, until he was
arrested that is! It was plastered across
all the national newspapers when Roy was
jailed for six years. But I liked him and I
used to visit him in prison,” she says.
“By the time Roy was released from jail
Mark (second husband) and I had split
up and our house had been repossessed.
So with very little money I managed to
buy a small cottage and this was when I
became friendlier with Roy. He could have
been Jack the Ripper and I would have
liked him because he liked my dogs!
“Suddenly, out of the blue, my parents
decided to move to the Isle of Wight to
retire, having never visited the island
before. We decided to join them and
Roy’s retired father came too. We bought
a cottage next to Smallbrook Stadium,
which had a small livery yard next to
it. I married Roy on the strict condition
he didn’t play doctors anymore.
“Unfortunately the will to be a doctor
became too strong and Roy ended up back
in prison. Once again I ended up divorced
with the house being repossessed, but
I managed to keep my livery yard and
my land.” Karen purchased a mobile
home and put it on her land and then
husband number four came along.
“Chris, my fourth and current husband,
is a perfectly normal surveyor, a very law
abiding, quiet and unassuming person.
We have been together now for 15 years
and married for 14 years. So now I’m just
a boring old housewife, with a couple of
horses in the back garden,” she laughs.
Never one to set her sights too low,
riding has always been a passion
for Karen Ledger and is perhaps
the thing that kept her sane when
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