Thursday 29 October 2015

Getting inspired at The European Championships at Blair

As I am writing this whilst I'm in the middle of getting ready for Osberton, we are leaving early in the morning with Boo and Arabella for their first CCI 1*.September has been a busy month…It started with Goring where the horses had a nice confident run in the Intermediate Novice, this was a nice easy run for Hector after Hartpury and it was a good stepping stone for Boo and Arabella before they moved up.
My next run was at Pontispool but things didn’t go as well as I had quite hoped. Arabella was in the intermediate but it was a very grown up XC track and she was a bit shocked and lost a bit of her confidence going round. She had a few stops but that’s what is like when you bring a young one on, you constantly hit hurdles in their learning process.
Rosie did her first Novice and she was brilliant. It was also quite a big challenging XC course and she just had 2 hesitations at a step into water, but I was over the moon at how well she coped.
 
Next stop was The South of England where Rosie went in her second novice and she was fabulous completing an absolutely cracking XC round. Then I took Boo and Hector for the intermediate. Hector was in absolute top form and came 8th. He is the coolest horse and I can’t wait to take him 2* next year. It was Boo’s first intermediate and she was brilliant apart from the silly jockey on top who managed to get us eliminated through error of the course but we still completed and I was so happy at how easy she found it.
We also went to Scotland to watch the senior Europeans at Blair Castle. We had a brilliant 5 days, even if it was freezing cold and pouring down with rain on XC day. It was great to watch all the GB riders but Michael Jung is one insane human being. 
Now off I go back to packing for Osberton, oh and there goes mum with an armful of wine...