Gary Brown, who has been training from Henrietta Knight’s West Lock-inge stables, near Wantage, for the last year is to take a break from the sport to go globetrotting.

The 49-year-old moved to West Lockinge Farm while building work was taking place at his previous base at champion jockey Tony McCoy’s Upper Lambourn yard.

But now he has decided to travel the world for a year, with his adventure set to include riding the stages of the Tour de France for amateurs next summer.

He said: “It is really something I have just been thinking about.

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“Sometimes you get a bit stale with things and need to freshen things up and sometimes a break brings that.”

Brown has dispersed his small string with the majority of his horses going back to Ireland, while his best-known charge, six-time winner Chestnut Ben, has joined Peter Winks’ Little Houghton yard, near Barnsley.

Brown, who has a house near Lambourn, felt the sport had left him a little jaded. “Hen was great,” he said. “It is just a shame that when I went there I had lost a bit of interest and enthusiasm, but it wasn’t a result of being there.

“I will miss a certain part of the job, but equally there are parts I won’t miss. I will miss the horses, but that is a small part of it.”

He plans to spend several months in Australia, and is also looking forward to tackling the most arduous mountain stages of the Tour de France while the route is open to amateurs.

“You get to this sort of age and with the eating and drinking you can go the wrong way,” he said.

“You need to be more active and at least you don’t have to feed a cycle.”

Looking further ahead, he said it would depend on what his friend, McCoy, decided to do in the future whether he would return to the training ranks.

“I would do something with him when he retires if he wants to do something,” he added.

“If he doesn’t then I don’t know, but we’ll see.”

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