A HORSE rider who crashed her car after drinking Prosecco and white wine has been banned from the roads for 15 months.

Alcoholic Frances Hughes, 62, was celebrating success in a competition at the end of a riding holiday in Royal Wootton Bassett and had been sober for two years before being tempted into drinking the bubbly, Swindon Magistrates Court heard on Wednesday.

Prosecutor Pauline Lambert said police were called out at 10pm on August 27 to a crash in George Lane, Marlborough, where Hughes’s Volvo had hit a parked VW Polo.

She admitted to them she had been driving the car and they gave her a roadside breath test.

In a later test at the police station the lowest reading she gave was 55 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35mcg.

Hughes, of Oxford Street, Ramsbury, said in her interview that she had been on her way home after a horse riding competition in Royal Wootton Bassett where she had done well.

At 6pm she and the other riders had celebrated with Prosecco, white wine and beer.

She was a recovering alcoholic and had not touched alcohol for more than 18 months since going through rehab.

Former businesswoman Hughes, who was convicted of being drunk in charge of a vehicle last year and was given a five-year driving ban for excess alcohol in 2002, told officers she had thought she was okay to drive.

She admitted being over the alcohol limit. Her solicitor Harriet Heard said she had been on a riding holiday that ended with a competition.

She had fallen off and hurt herself and later when the riders gathered for celebratory drinks she was offered some.

“Normally she would not have touched them but as she had fallen off people were saying: ‘Have a drink',” Miss Heard said.

It was quite a bit later when she got into her car to go home and she believed she was under the alcohol limit.

The accident happened after she was distracted by her handbag falling off the seat.

“She was arrested and kept in a cell overnight. It was distressing for her,” Miss Heard said.

Since the accident a supportive friend was helping to make sure she got into a rehab centre.

An earlier court hearing was adjourned because she was due to have treatment, but when she fell down stairs at home she had to go to hospital, meaning her rehabilitation was delayed.

Magistrates ordered Hughes to undergo a drink-driver rehabilitation course and fined her £650 with £85 prosecution costs and a victim surcharge of £65.