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.

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. 

The Show Jumping was causing quite a lot of problems but I wasn't feeling particularly nervous. We went in and actually did probably our best round in competition yet. There was minimal running into fences by George and we hit most things on a good stride. I was therefore absolutely gutted to have three fences down....George has a very good jumping record but is very quirky and tricky to ride. I think I just need to spend the winter getting used to him, stopping his bad manners that I've let him learn and just generally learning to push the right buttons. I have no doubt that the clears will come, but it will take time.

Finally the best bit! When I walked the course I wasn't worried and thought it was fairly straight forwards. However when I arrived at the start box, the starter asked me if my horse was good XC. I said yes normally, he then replied saying ''so are you going to get through the finish''. I was like yes I hope so, are not many people completing?! He was like...No....not many! This obviously filled me with confidence just before my round! George didn't give me as good a ride as at Somerford but we went clear with just 10 time faults so that's what counts! Although unfortunately I had to do a long route (my first EVER long route on a XC course...literally EVER!) At the second water you did a big drop in, then a 90 degree left turn, up a slope and out over a corner. As I landed in the water I went to collect up my reins and completely lost my left rein and was clearly totally unable to turn him left to the corner so had to think very quickly and go long!

So all in all not our finest day! But on a good note, the SJ and XC caused lots of problems so I managed to come 6th and gain 2 points!
Oh and I also found out that I have got into Gatcombe 2*! So I will be doing my Dressage first thing on Friday morning!

I wasn't sure how the Show Jumping would go. I know we are both capable of a clear and we jumped a Foxhunter well a few weeks ago with just 4 faults but we are both a lot more tense in competition. True to form we warmed up brilliantly, but had a disappointing two down in the ring. I just let him run on down a related distance and we then had the following fence down as well. The course did cause a lot of problems so 8 faults did not look out of place, but ideally I want no worse than 4 faults at the moment.

Finally was the Cross country! I was a bit concerned as it was a tough track and only our 3rd course together. However I needn't have worried, he gave me an absolutely foot perfect round. He was absolutely flying, didn't touch a fence and was as straight as an arrow! Consequently, even though I very nearly jumped the wrong 2nd last fence and went on a bit of a detour, we still had one of the quickest times of the day!

So all in all a very good day. I was especially pleased with the Dressage & XC. I know the show jumping will come, it will just take some time before we are fully in sync in the arena. Overall we finished 5th which I was thrilled with! Although my 2 fences down did prove very costly!!
Our next stop will be Pontispool OIU21 and then Gatcombe CIC**.

Jack is now fully retired and mooching around in the field at home! He has no shoes and looks very feral...! He also enjoys the company of George in the day time! I'm not going to lie...I really really really miss riding and competing him and I think he misses it too! So I plan to jump on and have a play in the field with him at some point.....shhh don't tell anyone though!

The Cross Country was fairly up to height and had some interesting questions that would test our control and accuracy, the main fence that concerned me was 13 & 14ab. You had to do a very big step up then turn 90 degrees left and jump down another step, do one stride, then turn right on a six pence and then 2/3 strides depending on the horse and over a very large skinny tripple brush. 

However George stormed around the XC jumping everything very easily but because it was quite a twisty course we never really got going and ended up with 9.2 time faults. 

All in all very pleased, we did a good double clear and so I have decided to crack on and enter the OIU21 at Somerford....watch this space!