HAZEL Woodbridge cheerily admits to being one of life’s getters-of-things-done.

“I’ve always been an organiser,” she said.

“I can’t ever remember not organising things. The other day I was reading an article about somebody who planned their funeral and I thought to myself, I’d probably be organising things – sitting up in the coffin and saying, ‘Oi, you haven’t done that right… ‘”

Hazel didn’t began carriage driving until she was in her 40s, and even then only by chance, but within two or three years of picking up the reins for the first time she won a major accolade, the Shetland Driven Performance Award, for consistent excellence the show ring.

A few years later she was made assistant area commissioner of the British Driving Society. A couple of years after that she became area commissioner, a role she has held for about a decade.

Her BEM recognises leadership work in promoting the sport, organising events, attracting new carriage drivers and helping to make carriage driving as inclusive as possible, notably among people with disabilities.

“The carriage driving started in 1990 or 1991. It was when computers had become more than just computerised typewriters. I thought I’d better keep up and go on an evening course.

“I got the Swindon College prospectus. I said: ‘There’s a course on carriage driving here – that’s a bit unusual’. I just thought it would be fun.”

Hazel’s love of carriage driving is obvious: “It’s a team thing between you and your horse and pony because, whereas when you ride you have got your knees and close proximity to the horse to guide it, when you’re driving all you have between it and you and disaster is a pair of reins and your voice.

“With driving, it is very much a communication between you and your horse and a trust between the two of you. As things develop you become as one.“

Carriage driving has brought many memorable experiences, but one of the most memorable involved her first Shetland Pony, Mackintosh, who lived to his 21st year.

Pausing in a pub car park one day, Hazel saw a group of young people with disabilities who were on a bus trip. Mackintosh became so restless that Hazel allowed him to go where he wanted to, and he headed for a profoundly disabled boy in a wheelchair.

“Mackintosh just went straight to him and laid his muzzle in his hands and stood there. It was nothing to do with me at all. He just made a beeline for this lad. The expression on the lad’s face made me cry and it makes me cry now.”

Hazel, one of six siblings, is originally from Bearsted in Kent. Her father was a farmer and market gardener and her mother a housewife who also kept the books for the business.

Her first experience of equestrianism involved a donkey called Janey who originally belonged to her brother.

“I was taught to ride cavalry-style, upright, none of that bumping up and down – as far as my father was concerned that was sissy stuff.

“I got chucked off so many times. She had a one-track mind and that was called food. We used to go past the feed shed and she’d notice the door was open. Then we’d go a few yards past it and I’d go one way and she’d go the other way.

“In the end I said enough was enough. I didn’t really have much more to do with horses. We always had cattle and sheep and pigs and what have you, but we didn’t have any horses on the farm.”

Hazel’s can-do attitude surfaced early and is something she puts down in part to her upbringing.

“My father said that when I grew up my favourite word was ‘why’ or ‘how’. My brothers had all left home, and when he wanted somebody to be on the other end of a levelling board to lay cement, guess who it was? I learned to lay concrete, I learned to repointing brickwork, I learned basic carpentry.”

At 12 she joined the school carpentry club, much to the surprise of the teacher in charge, who had never had a girl come through the door of the workshop before. One of her projects was a boot puller which she still uses today.

When the family moved to Herefordshire, Hazel worked in her spare time with well-known groom Robert Oliver and followed the exploits of her heroine, showjumper Pat Smythe, on television. Her cat was named after Smythe’s greatest horse, Tosca.

Hazel didn’t become involved with equestrianism again until her 40s, by which time she was in the midst of a successful career.

A qualification in hotel and catering work from Haverford Technical College led initially to a bursarship at a teacher training college and then a move to the health service.

By the age of 30, Hazel was in charge of 1,000 staff delivering housekeeping at a swathe of London hospitals.

Marriage in 1985 to Richard, a Highworth-born rep for a carpet firm, saw her take a job with Gloucestershire County Council, overseeing contractors and having responsibility for every council building.

Hazel was the first woman to be part of professional body the British Cleaning Council, which she later chaired. Her work for the organisation included judging town and city cleanliness competitions all over Britain. She is quite possibly the only person in the region who can claim to have officially inspected the public conveniences of Aberdeen.

Before keeping a vow to herself that she would retire on her 60th birthday, Hazel spent the last dozen years of her career with a property firm, rising to head its lettings department and overseeing expansion.

Hazel never did get around to signing up for a computer course, and ended up teaching herself how to use the machines. “If you stand on your own two feet, so to speak, you do get things done. Otherwise things don’t get done, do they?”