Browsing Category Competition Reports & Training

5am alarm, plaiting in the lorry, 2x sets of tack and my favourite green and white xc gear it’s eventing time again! We set off to the BE80 at Crown Farm, Ascot under Wychwood for D’s 2nd ODE and what a mega day we had. Things didn’t start too well though we got there nice and early so we could walk the course and on my portaloo pit stop before setting off round the xc I managed to drop my apple (breakfast!) down the portaloo, I flushed it goodbye and off we set round the course. The course seemed very…

Love show jumping but hate hanging about for hours on end for your class to start? me too! We needed to get some show jumping practice in before our 2nd event on Sunday so instead of looking for a local competition and entering a few classes, I boxed off to Rectory Farm Arena for some fun and efficient show jump schooling instead. No hanging about for the class to start, no crowded warm up to contend with, no silly jacket required that would boil me to death, and no bank loan necessary to cover multiple entry fees, perfect! After initially…

Today we went in search of points! This year my dressage aim is to qualify for the British Dressage Winter Regional Finals, and for that at Prelim level we need to gain 19 ‘prelim points’ in winter qualifier classes. We arrived at the venue, tacked up and started to warm up in the indoor and IT WAS HOT!!! Thankfully we were allowed to compete without jackets which made it much more comfortable. The first test was a bit lack luster, Dustry sort of dried up on me in the arena which resulted in a trip into the walk as he…

Today after having our competition plans last weekend scuppered by Dustry’s love sickness we set off to Elmwood for some combined training on grass. This is a great venue and we’ve been here several times before for sj and xc schooling. You could choose between 2x tests a BD Prelim or a BE test so we plumped for BE90 test 95 with a round of SJ at 80cms. He was super to warm up, and did some of his best work to date. Having last been out eventing he kept locking on to the xc fences dotted about near the…

After 3 years away from eventing I finally managed to get back out and have a bash at stringing all three phases together at Dustry’s first ever event! Mother are I drove 3hrs to Swalcliffe and back the day before to walk the course and as I was half expecting an 80cm ODE to be all roll tops and logs I was a little shocked at the complexity of the course! After the first few easy jumps fence 4ab was a white wall on a curving line to a skinny wall, fence 5 was a hedge that looked like you…

With Dustry’s first EVER one day event just under 2 weeks away we have been practising our XC and SJ as much as possible. I took him over the few little home-made XC fences we have on the farm, and after an initial ‘you expect me to jump this higgledy piggledy heap of tyres???’ moment he popped them sweetly and went on to jump the whole line of 6 up and back without hesitation. We went off to Elmwood Equestrian last Saturday for a lesson with my instructor Amanda Brewer over the SJs on grass and a few XC fences…