Clare Balding

Join acclaimed broadcaster and author Clare Balding in partnership with Hungerford  Book Shop at The Tractor Shed, Highclere Valley, RG20 9LT for an intimate and exclusive experience to celebrate the launch of her debut novel, Pastures New, in paperback.

There are two options to choose from in this quirky and rural book talk (and optional walk) right on style for Clare, and the theme of her new book!

Option 1: WALK WITH CLARE

Arrival: 10.30am at Highclere Valley for coffee & cake, then enjoy a beautiful walk with Clare 11-11.45am 

Meet for a coffee and a delicious slice of cake before this small select group will join Clare for a walk around beautiful Highclere Valley, home of world renowned thoroughbred horse breeders, Highclere Stud. Dogs formally invited to join!

One per ticket holder, strictly on a lead please..

You will pass grazing mares, foals, cows and of course, sheep.

Walkers will have a chance to get up close and personal with Clare on one of her infamous ‘rambles’. 

Option 2: TALK, LUNCH & BOOK SIGNING

Arrival 11.45-12pm / Talk, Lunch & Book Signing 12-1pm 

From the courts of Wimbledon to Buckingham Palace to the Traitors Castle, Clare is known to millions on screen for her warmth and wit.

Now she brings the same humour and insight to her fiction.

Pastures New is a funny and heartwarming novel that captures Clare’s deep affection for the countryside and the people she meets, which listeners of her BBC Radio 4 series Ramblings are bound to enjoy.

A lifelong lover of animals, she also seeks to shine a light on the role they play in our lives through her writing and other projects, which will see her adding an entrepreneurial string to her bow this year.

Go and chat to her about all this and more, and take home a signed copy of Pastures New.

PRICING

Separate and bundle tickets available for morning walk and lunch time talk.

Tickets limited. 

1- Morning walk with Clare: £20 (only 25 places available in total)

2- Lunch, Talk (with book included) at The Tractor Shed: £30

3- Bundle ticket of both 1 and 2 discounted rate of: £40

About Pastures New:

Alex has perfected the art of dodging responsibility during her almost 40 years – until an unexpected letter turns her life upside down.

She’s inherited a crumbling sheep farm in wildest, wettest Wales.

This was not her life plan.

Not at all.

Now, her closest companion is a stubborn Welsh terrier, she’s speed-reading The Idiot’s Guide to Farming, and her arrival has set the village gossip mill spinning.

With the farm near collapse, Alex sets out to uncover the truth behind her mysterious inheritance.

Clare Balding grew up in the countryside surrounded by horses and dogs, and reading everything from Jilly Cooper to Henry James.

Her autobiography, ‘My Animals and Other Family’, won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year.

A keen rider, she competed as an amateur flat jockey during her teenage years, winning Champion Lady Rider in 1990.

After an English Literature degree at Cambridge, she became a journalist.

Alongside her award-winning sports broadcasting and coverage of major Royal events, Clare hosts her much-loved Ramblings series on Radio 4, taking her across the British Isles exploring its landscape and its storytelling.

A passionate campaigner for equality and women’s sport, Clare was awarded a CBE for her services to Sport and Charity in 2022, which she was honoured to receive at Buckingham Palace.