Sunday 22 April 2012

Hambledon International

My first competition on Sarah Dunsdon's Mulligan II. He has been with us for two weeks.

As usual the journey there was interesting. It would be great to go somewhere and get there without getting lost. This time we borrowed a friend's sat nav. To start with we didn't have anything to attach it to. Mum had a bright idea of hanging it over a bottle of water. Well you can guess what happened! The bottle shot side to side every time we went around a corner or the road sloped. So then she put it behind the steering wheel, only problem was she couldn't see it properly, not sure how it happened but we ended up on the M3 on our way to Southampton. Hambledon is near Henley on Thames! I then had to take charge, I held the sat nav and directed Mum, we managed to get there but added a good half an hour to our time!

We had time for a quick walk around the XC course and then we were on for dressage. The the heavens absolutely opened. We got properly drenched but Mulligan must have loved it and got into his swing. He got a 29!

The showjumping I wondering how he would be as his record is not brilliant. It was drier and I was luckier than most and it did not rain. Once Mulligan got into his stride we had a cracking round.

It was then on to the cross country. I knew as soon as we started it was going to be good. He went at a good pace, in a good rhythm and flew everything.

Getting out of Hambledon was a different matter, there had been so much rain. We nearly made it, then we needed a tractor to pull us the final couple of feet. We had to leave promptly as I was supposed to be competing on Saturday and asked Lisa Rogers (the wife of Michael Rogers MDR Photo) to keep an eye on the scoreboard. The first we knew of our placing was on the way home when we were stuck in traffic for an hour on the motorway! Mulligan went beyond my dreams and we were terribly lucky to come 3rd.

Picture below taken by Monty White, check out his fantastic blog and the orginal inspiration for my blog.
http://blog.talkinghorse.net/




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