Being awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours meant as much to Paralympic rider Anne Dunham from Broad Hinton as picking up two golds and a silver in Beijing.

In fact it has been a golden year for the golden girl of equestrianism because besides the Olympic medals, she celebrated her 60th birthday shortly after returning from Beijing and was then named the BBC West Sports Personality of the Year.

Even after all the back-slapping and column inches of praise she received for her Olympic feats, Mrs Dunham said she was deliriously happy to get the MBE.

“I am ecstatic, I think it is a really great honour, “It is a great honour to have been chosen for this award on top of everything else that has happened to me during 2008,” said Mrs Dunham.

She said she was planning a rip-roaring celebration of her year’s achievements but especially being awarded an MBE with friends at her local, The Crown in Broad Hinton.

Beijing were the fourth Paralympic games that this determined sportswoman had taken part in and, although she has reached the age when many women are happy to retire, she has set her sights on picking up more medals on home ground when the Olympics come to London in 2012.

Her success tells an amazing story of a woman who rode as a child but after being told at the age of 27 that she had multiple sclerosis she never sat in a saddle again for five years.

She maintained her connection by keeping horses and ponies and, ten years after being confined to a wheelchair, this indomitable women together with her late husband Mervyn opened a riding school in Wales where she became involved with Riding for the Disabled.

After a marriage break up and the death of her husband Mrs Dunham sold the ridding school and settled in Wiltshire.

Rosemary Meeke from Tilshead, near Devizes, has been made an MBE for her work as editor of the forces magazine Drumbeat, based at Tidworth and founded 11 years ago, and with the Army Education Centre, especially the Storybook Soldiers scheme.

This groundbreaking scheme involves servicemen and women recording bedtime stories for their children which can be played to the children to bring their parents, serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, closer to them.

In the honours there were also OBEs for Dr Randal William Richards of Marlborough, formerly chief executive of Research Councils UK, for services to science and Professor Andrew Pettigrew, Dean at the School of Management at the University of Bath for services to local and national Higher Education.

There were MBEs for Meg Atkinson for services to the Soldiers' and Airmen's Scripture Reader Association at RAF Lyneham; Dr Chitra Bharucha, of Marlborough, for services to the animal feed industry; John Hansford, of Malmesbury, formerly director of the Swindon Office of the Natural Environment Research Council, for services to science; Michael Norton, of Malmesbury, for services to the water industry and to international trade.

Wiltshire's Chief Constable Brian Moore was awarded the Queen's police medal.