HE calls himself the travelling trainer. This time, though, Noel Wilson insists he is staying put in Middleham.

“I think it’s seven places I’ve been in since I started,” he says. “When I went to Scotland, and then came back, I did come here and look but I couldn’t find the right place.

“But this is it. This is my last saloon, basically – here, head down, getting stuck into the job and let’s hope I move forward and not backwards.”

After featuring in The Press’ first ever Turf Talk column, back in July, 2007, life has rarely been boring for Wilson.

Success came easily at the Sandburn stables in Flaxton but the Irishman over-reached – chasing a dream that couldn’t be realised at Belstane Stables in Scotland – and he has been on the run ever since.

He thought he had fallen on his feet when he took over the famous Breckenborough yard in Thirsk, where Jack and Lynda Ramsden teamed up with a fledgling Kieren Fallon to record winner after winner in the 1990s.

But even that road wasn’t paved with gold.

Personal problems, leading to divorce, beset the trainer and a rival business which was burgeoning on the Sandhutton yard made it difficult for him to get his horses in a position to win.

So Wilson found he was still banging in 15 winners a season but with the big handicap successes, the likes of Pavershooz who landed a £40,000 handicap at Ayr, long gone.

He was back where he started. And he was irritated.

“I went to Breckenborough, which was ideal at the time but, facility-wise, I was just struggling to do what I wanted to do there,” he explains. “The trouble was that we were having to box horses up to go and gallop all the time.

“After that, the main problem was they started as an equestrian centre on the site – they built it up – and there was just too much going on every weekend for my horses.

“Weekends were taken over and I was struggling to get the horses out on a Friday and a Saturday because there were events.”

The wanderer went back for another look at Middleham and, next door to Karl Burke’s famous Spigot Lodge yard, Wilson has re-established himself in the more modest surroundings of Caphall Lodge – the former yard of Paul Murphy.

“We came across here. We’ve built another ten boxes and we could not be more ideally suited,” the trainer enthuses.

“You are ten minutes from the High Moor and 15 minutes from the Low Moor.

“What I have really struggled with is facilities. I have trained plenty of winners but never had the gallops. I’ve had nice yards but struggled with facilities to train and that was the main goal in coming here.

“I feel I have stood still for too long and have had to reinvent myself. Last year we had 15 winners but I don’t know how we achieved them.

“We are down on numbers, we are just starting to get some fresh ammunition again. We’ve got four or five young horses this year. When you lose the likes of Hotham, Heartbreak and Pavershooz then it’s hard.

“We have got 20 horses in, a good team, good, loyal owners which I really appreciate – people who have been with me for years through the thick and the thin and stayed. We have had plenty come and go since.”

These have been trying times. But Wilson prefers not to dwell on the past and, even though the road back to the days when the yard could win a Gosforth Park Sprint looks long, he is optimistic.

“Last year was the hardest year, mentally and physically, that I have ever had,” he said. “But we are out of the other end of it now – in a fresh place and a new start.

“Everything is done here. We don’t have to worry about going and hiring a gallop, or maintaining things. It makes life a lot easier for us, as trainers, to walk out, go on the gallops and come home. I’ve got what I need. I am looking forward to rebuilding everything and getting back to where we were.

“We have room for 32 horses with a lot more building room. I am where I started but I haven’t gone anywhere in the last three years.

“That’s the annoying side of it. We won with Hotham at York. Demolition won big handicaps. We went from winning Class 2 races, just short of breaking through, to drifting back down the line again.

“That’s the hard part. I want to get back to those races. I want to be competitive in handicaps again. That’s where I need to build back from.”