Campaigners battling for the right to ride their horses across a new golf course have enlisted the help of a pantomime filly.

Members of the Thackley, Esholt and District Bridleway Association are campaigning for bridleway status to be granted to a route running over Hollins Hill from Esholt to Baildon.

They took along a pantomime-style horse to highlight their campaign which comes weeks after Bradford Council was criticised by a Local Government Ombudsman and forced to pay other local bridleway associations £500 for failing to maintain horse riding routes.

Association treasurer Tracy Peel said the pantomime horse was the only one which could navigate the bridge.

She said: "We just want somewhere safe to ride our horses and this is a vital route for riders. If you can't ride on the bridleway you are forced onto the road and it's incredibly dangerous.

"Some of the roads we have to ride, like Ladderbanks and Mill Lane, can be quite scary. Now we're all worried that the golf club will oppose the bridleway running through its land."

Group members say they have been unable to ride the path since 1989 when a wooden bridge that spans Gill Beck, above Baildon, linking two sections of the bridleway, was replaced ten years ago with a footbridge impassable by horses.

Despite the group applying for the route to be officially recognised as a bridleway after the bridge was replaced, it has still to be considered by a Bradford Council highways sub-committee later this year.

Part of the path runs through the new Marriott Hollins Hotel golf club which does not recognise the route's bridleway status.

A spokesman for Bradford Council's Right of Way Section, said: "We are currently investigating claims that a public right of way across Hollins Hill should be recorded as a bridleway and not a footpath as shown on the definitive map."

The Council would like to hear from horse riders who used the route before 1989 to help it decide whether an order should be made to record it as a bridleway. Contact the Rights of Way Section, Goulbourne Street, Keighley.

A spokesman for the Whitbread Hotel Company, which operates the Hollins Hill golf course, said: "It's our understanding that there is no bridleway there but we are working with all the relevant parties involved to establish whether there is or not."

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