I am sad to announce that my Christmas holidays are over and I am now back at Uni and facing exams! As much as I wanted to see my Uni friends I was really sad about leaving the V.W. team and coming back to the grind. 
I love my job and below are some photos taken the other day which may help explain why!! After a few days of horrific and fairly miserable weather it settled and the floods became more manageable so on the horses non-work day we took a few 'special case' horses down to the meadows for a splash around!

In between work I have been riding George and he is coming on nicely. Since his work has upped he has now been clipped and I also attacked his mane & tail so he no longer looks quite so feral! Tim will come back at the end of the month and hopefully give us the all clear to start jumping.

Today I persuaded my brother to come to work and take photos of us all up the gallops! Below are a selection, the rest can be seen at:- http://www.masterplan-photography.co.uk/gallery/111226-Racing

Well it's all go at the moment! Life is very hectic what with Uni work, Uni societies, horses, work and general socialising! I feel like i've hardly had time to breath over the past month...let alone sleep!

I have been coming back most weekend to work for Venetia/Tor, go hunting or to meet up with groups of friends back home.
Last weekend I went Hunting which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have hardly hunted over the past two years due to eventing and injuries and have missed it so much. I got to hunt the delightful Rosie who felt brilliant and had an awesome time. I'm going back this weekend again because it's our hunt ball on Saturday night, so will hunt again on Saturday.

Meanwhile George has been having regular sessions with Tim Bradford and has been coming on in leaps and bounds. He has now progressed to long reigning and in a few weeks I should be able to start riding him again. He now has so much more movement through his back, it's very impressive stuff!

Finally, on a different note, I had a day off today because my lab session was cancelled and decided to do something productive with the free time. So I drove up to the Brecon Beacons and did the iconic Waterfalls walk. It's a 15.3km/9.5miles low level walk with some very impressive waterfalls along the way. At one point you even walk behind a waterfall! The guide book time for the walk was 6hours yet I managed to do it in 3h20mins!!! (I am a very fast walker and was on my own so didn't have to wait for anyone or faff around!) I  had a great time and will definitely do some more routes when I have the time. 

I did rather different to the norm activities this weekend! Having seen the results from a friends photo shoot with Pierre Lemond I was desperate to have a go. So when they rang up asking if I was interested I jumped at the chance. I took my friend along as part of her 18th birthday treat and we had a great time. Bar all the waiting around...! Although MacDonald's on the way home made everything seem okay! 
Below are the photos, I hope you like them - it will probably be the last time you see me looking like that and not covered in bits of straw and muck! (Click to enlarge)

I realise I haven't made a blog entry for a while so I thought I would do a quick post and update you on what's happening. 
George is having his end of season holiday and so has joined Jack in the field! In a few weeks he will have some physio and then come back into work with the aim of re-building his muscles more correctly and thus making his back end stronger. Currently I am just starting out at Cardiff Uni where I am reading Medical Engineering. So far, so good, bar our first lab session which we had yesterday - It was stressful to say the least...!

I have joined the Cardiff Mountaineering (CUMC) and Sub-Aqua (Diving) societies, so I will be having lots of fun! The other weekend we (CUMC) went down to climb on the Gower. I haven't done any pure climbing in years and really enjoyed it. (See photos below).
I also did a 'test dive' yesterday with the Sub-Aqua society to see if I wanted to sign up to the course, it was really cool so come next week I will be starting by BSAC course and by the end of the year I will have my Ocean/Open water diving qualification.

To earn some money before I head off to Uni I have started working back at Venetia Williams Racing. I thoroughly enjoy riding out for her as the lads & lasses are such good fun! I am desperate to have a proper go at pointing and riding out again is making me crave it even more! So I have decided to turn into a racing bean......check out my hat below!

Primarily I was going to Associates camp to use it as my Residential section for my Gold Duke of Edinburgh but it actually came at a very useful time to cement my partnership with George!

On the first day we had lessons with either Jonty Evans or Sophie Martindale. I had Sophie and we did grid work in the school. This was incredibly fun - NINE bounces in a row! George was, as Hannah described him, like a Ballet dancer on acid! He is such an athletic little horse!

Next up was a Show Jumping session with Kenneth Clawson. This was very interesting and highlighted how little attention most of us paid to what we were doing. He told us to ride a square in canter and then proceeded to ask us how many strides we got on each side and none of us had a clue. Once this had been highlighted we all rode accurate squares with 9-11 strides on each side depending on the horse in question. Kenneth then said that immediately our riding and the horses way of going improved dramatically because we were riding determinedly and accurately. When we started jumping we worked on control and so had to get five strides in  a four stride distance. This highlighted how I was being very fixed in my elbow which was causing George to run against my hand into the base of the fence, once I softened my arms this was much improved.

We then went on a little trip to Talland to ride some schoolmaster horses. I ended up with a little grey pony that I had to literally drag out from the yard....everyone was in hysterics! However he turned out to be the best one in our group and a very cool little dude! He was an FEI team pony and trained up to Grand Prix level! Our lesson was with Charlie Hutton and unlike the other groups we didn't play around with the advanced level movements but Charlie took our stirrups away and worked on our positions. This was fairly useful I guess but not hugely fun or beneficial to the others in my group who wanted to ride some changes and half pass etc. I wasn't overly fussed as have been lucky enough to have had a schoolmaster of my own (Jack!!).

On Wednesday we had a session riding in the morning and in the afternoon.
In the morning we ran through a dressage test of our choice which was marked by Islay Auty. We then went through the test with Islay to try and improve on various aspects. George did a reasonably calm test, it was much improved on Salperton but still lots to work on - especially in the canter. Islay gave us all 6's and 7's for a mark of 35.5 (64.5%). We then worked on getting him to accept the contact more readily and relax into it in canter. He was better on the left rein than the right because on the right rein he is more stiff and I find it hard to keep him bent around my inside leg. So Islay had me on a circle bending his neck to the right until he softened and then when he did I then patted his neck and gave him the rein. This encouraged him to loosen his neck, bend to the inside and have a softer more relaxed frame.

In the afternoon we had a simulated XC session with Yogi Breisner. This was the first time I jumped George over XC style fences and I really enjoyed it! To start with Yogi just had us cantering around the field to assess our position and the main point he made from that was that we all needed to make sure that our lower leg remained forwards on the girth and didn't creep back as we started kicking our horses! After a few warm up fences we jumped some turning combinations to assess control and also a set of open kick on fences. We then came back to the technical fences and Yogi had us jumping a very tricky combination of three skinny brushes. We had to jump one skinny brush then do a 90 degree turn on 4/5 strides to another skinny brush, then a 90 degree turn in the another direction again on 4/5 strides to a third skinny brush! We jumped this up and down hill and the message Yogi got across was that XC riding isn't about looking pretty, it's about getting the horse clear! All in all it was very successful and Yogi also said that my position was excellent and that I had a very secure lower leg. So now I am really looking forward to doing proper XC with George at Purston on Sunday!

Finally on the last day we had either Jonty or Sophie again. This time I had Jonty and like with Islay the day before, we ran through a dressage test and then worked on what we could improve. We then jumped a course of Show Jumps. George improved yet again on his dressage which was very consistent in trot and much improved in the canter. We then worked on my presentation of the test and my setting up of (or lack of) the movements to ensure that we remained as balanced as possible.

The course of Show Jumps was pretty difficult considering it was the last day and the horses were all pretty tired! It was a very long course of 14 jumps with 17 jumping efforts on terrain that was very up and down and with very light plastic poles! I jumped a 1m10 track on George and we had two down which although not brilliant wasn't too bad and all the other 15  fences we hit on near perfect strides!!

George is now having a well earned day off in the field with my old retired bean that is Supplejack! Jack was SO excited to gain a playmate that he didn't know what to do with himself and just leapt around waving his legs and squealing!

Due to a very unfortunate series of events I am about to find myself totally horseless. Belvedere is being sold out of the eventing scene and Supplejack is retiring imminently. 

This unfortunately leaves me in a bit of a predicament especially due to the fact that I have already applied to & been accepted into Cardiff uni on a deferred placement. I.e. My course starts in 2012 so that I can have a gap year. The plan was that I was going to concentrate on horses and young riders in that year and then go to uni in October 2012. I now have no horses with which to fill that year & fulfil my dreams of Young Riders, Badminton & beyond. Unfortunately, even with some money from selling Belvedere (hopefully!!) we will still be a very long way off from buying a decent YR horse and although we could probably afford a good youngster, a year would not be long enough to produce it to the required level. Therefore I am having to do some serious thinking. And unless I can somehow find a ride on an intermediate + horse then I will have to quit eventing for now. And hopefully get transferred onto the 2011 course at Cardiff so that I don't have to have an unnecessary year out....

This is where I desperately need your help if I could get together a team of owners, together with our funds to jointly purchase & own a YR prospect horse then I would be able to continue eventing, aim for YR's in my gap year and continue my dream of eventing to the highest level - with you alongside me, being directly involved. 

We haven't been able to do much, well anything, recently due to the snow and so resorted to cantering/galloping around the fields in the snow! I did quite enjoy it though, because it gave me the chance to a) play with my little TB ex-racehorse and b) whack my stirrups up to jockey length and indulge in my slight love/obsession for race riding! 
Even better I managed to get my brother to take some awesome pictures of Jack playing! Bless him! Having said that, he isn't that innocent (Jack that is). He got so exuberant one time that he did the most expressive flying change, unseated me, went off bucking and catapulted me out of the saddle! Sad times!

That is pretty much all that has happened since the end of the event season! Belv has only just come back into work, and by work I mean walking on the roads. So he isn't really doing much. And with Jack....well we don't want to do much with him because it will be unnecessary wear on his joints, but our Dressage definitely needs a lot of work. So in order to improve it I have had a number of Tor lessons and also joined BD for the winter so I can get out practising! - Oh joy! Our first outing was very successful with Jack getting 64% in a Novice test and thus gaining 3 points! Since then we have had a number of Rosettes and a couple of points. It has definitely improved but I would like to see more consistency from him, so I  am still working away hard! However the cold weather & snow has put a bit of a stop to that because Tor's school is frozen so I haven't managed to have any lessons in a few weeks now.

The other exciting news recently is that I have got a Job! Nominally it is a weekend thing (as normally I would be at school) but seeing as it's the Christmas holidays I am working every morning from 7am-1pm for the whole three weeks, except for Fridays where I can have a lie in!! I am working at Venetia WIlliams' who is a local Racehorse trainer; her horse Mon Mome won the 2009 Grand National. I would really love to be riding out the racehorses on the gallops, but unfortunately because I am under 18 and haven't been through racing school I am not insured to do so, therefore I am just working on the yard. It is very tiring, but for once in my life I am actually earning money whilst I work which is a novelty and a half! Pay day is Friday so I am very excited!!