Today was a very very sad day for me as Belvedere went to his new hunting home down in Kent. We never ever planned on selling Belv but eventing can be a harsh world and the black and white reality of it was if I wanted to keep eventing, he had to go.

On a much happier note, I have found a new horse! His name is Gorgeous George IV (George) and I will be campaigning him at Intermediate/2* this season and aiming to upgrade to Advanced in 2012. Watch this space!!

His previous rider had him entered for the Intermediate at Salperton on Saturday, so I am going to take over the ride there so as not to waste his entry fee. The following weekend I will do the ON on him at Purston and then crack on with some OIU21's, hoping to finish the season with the CCIYR** at Weston Park.

Please follow this link to view my first ride on George (1m20 SJ track).

On the weekend I did my first Advanced at Chatsworth International Horse Trials! What an amazing experience that was, it didn't go quite to plan but I learnt a lot and Jack was absolutely fantastic!

Walking the course

The Dressage was never going to be spectacular as it is by far our weakest phase. However it didn't go too badly and we didn't make an horrific errors and ended up with 44.1 - Clearly not brilliant, but sub 45 so I was reasonably happy.

The Show Jumping was in a very impressive arena with a grandstand and it was a very long and up to height course so I was a little bit nervous! However Jack jumped out of his skin! He jumped all bar one of the fences in foot perfect fashion & clear. Unfortunately I made a mistake at fence 6 and we had it down and I had to circle before the next fence to organise ourselves again so picked up a few jumping penalties & a lot of time faults. So although it doesn't look very good on paper, he actually jumped incredibly well and it was almost a clear round!

Surprisingly I wasn't actually very nervous for the Cross Country. I think because I had already messed up the show jumping somewhat and so I just wanted to get on with it! I didn't wear my watch because I wasn't concerned with how quickly or not I was going as I just wanted to get round! After having a bit of a chit chat with Oli Townend in the warm up it was time to go! 
Jack jumped fences 1 & 2 very well, but unfortunately he was being unusually strong and I just didn't have him where I wanted coming to fence 3 and we came up the bank, turned for the fence and just met it on a completely duff stride. Lucky totally deserted us and he just couldn't jump it. We re-presented and jumped it fine. It was just one of those galling & really unlucky things. However we put it behind us and proceeded to jump clear around the rest of the course over all the direct routes in exemplary fashion! Although slightly disappointed with the 20 penalties I couldn't have been more thrilled with Jack coming through the finish! He isn't experienced at this level having only done one advanced in the UK a few years ago, yet he took everything in his stride and sailed round!

So all in all a very good first Advanced! Although it didn't go quite as I had planned or hoped, we successfully completed arguably the biggest Advanced in the country and so I can't really complain. I made a few mistakes and paid for them, but Jack was an absolute superstar and didn't put a foot wrong so overall I am thrilled and really want to get back out there and continue competing at this level. So if anyone has any ideas of suitable horses/owners then please please please get in touch.

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. 

What a horse! Not much more to say really! He was such a superstar once again! He did a very sweet correct Dressage test for the most part. But unfortunately his tension got the better of him at a number of different occasions and so amongst the 6's and 7's were also 5's and 3's and we ended up with a disappointing 42.3 which I thought was rather harsh. But such is life!

Onto the best bit! Jumping time! The course was up to height but not the biggest track I have jumped. However it was very twisty with a lot of fairly technical dog legs and the two people that jumped before me did not have good rounds to say the least so it didn't fill me with confidence!! However not to worry - Jack jumped another superb clear round! 

Finally the Cross Country! It was a lovely course, as it always is at Withington. Nice and big & bold but also good and technical at times! I wasn't really worried about anything except possibly the water as the fence in wasn't very inviting. But Jacked popped around everything very sweetly and even though I went quite steadily, especially over the first half of the course, we only picked up 8.4 time faults. So another double clear - 3rd one in a row! What a super horse!

Next event - Chatsworth Advanced! Exciting stuff!

Well well well...I never thought I'd see the day! After years of longing to have a go at P2P-ing I finally got the chance! Mum lent me her team-chasing/hunt ride horse (Cloons Master Plan/Ross) to enter into the Tim Carter Hunt Memorial Challenge.  It was run as the last race of the day, over just one lap of the course omitting the open ditch, and restricted to people who have never held a P2P licence.

My friend from Eventing and work at Venetia William's kindly lent me all the kit and also came with her mum to help, support, watch and take photos! Below are some photos of me & Ross all kitted up back at the lorry before I had to put the ghastly number bib on!

Finally after a bit of hanging around & getting increasingly more nervous it was time to head to the paddock and parade!

Mum paraded Ross in her snazzy new boots that she bought at Badminton whilst I chatted to Beth who was going to leg me up, posed for a few photos (to be seen below!!!) and got even more nervous & exctied!!

After fifteen minutes or so it was time to be legged up and make our way down to the start! Ross was surprisingly very well behaved whilst I was legged up but once the master who was leading us to the start blew the hunting horn he got considerably more excited and was very strong cantering to the start line!

Once down at the start we had our girths checked and a briefing where basically they just reminded us to go around the open ditch! And then finally...WE WERE OFF!!!! Perfect stride over fence one which was a relief! We got a bit close to fence 2 and Ross pinged me out of the saddle slightly...unfortunately this is where all the photographs were taken! What was more worrying was the person next to me flying through the air and landing very hard at my horses feet! Rather scary! There was a long gallop to fence 3 because we had to go around the open ditch! The leading horse took a dislike to the fence and ran around it but Ross flew it brilliantly, we really stood off it and it was an amazing feeling!

Unfortunately fence 4 was where it all went a bit pair shaped! We jumped it well, but on the landing/getaway stride Ross tripped and did the most spectacular nose dive (he had a very green grass stained nose) and went arse over tit (muddy saddle) face-planting me into the ground in the process! Not ideal & such a shame as it was going really well and I was really enjoying it! Very annoying to have not finished the race but it hasn't put me off! I just really want to get out there and have another go....possibly on a proper Point to Point horse & in a proper race.....!!

Well, I am afraid this isn't much of a report! Jack had been going well on the flat leading up to the event so I was hoping that we could improve on Somerley 2* and try and get a late 50's double clear. However it was not meant to be! Early Friday morning we drove (well mum drove) the 4.5 hours all the way to the coast! (Norfolk). Unfortunately when we got there we were very unimpressed by the state of the ground, particularly the Dressage and the Cross Country. And as Jack is an old boy who had stiffened up quite a lot on the journey anyway we decided it was prudent to withdraw rather than to hammer him round on some rough hard ground. 

We stayed the night to give Jack some time to rest before setting off home again on Saturday morning. Albeit a slightly delayed departure because the lorry decided it didn't wish to start and we had to get the help of a local mechanic! All in all not our most successful weekend!

Firstly I am very sorry for the rather lengthy delay in writing this report! But things all got a bit hectic with organising everything for Burnham Market 2* which turned out to be a rather non-event anyway. But I will explain what happened there in my next report!

I went to Sapey with high hopes that Belvedere would continue to put in another very respectable & very correct performance like he has done at all his other BE100's this season. 
He didn't warm up brilliantly for the Dressage so I hastily got Mum to run and fetch Tor to give me a hand warming up. We got him going a bit better and went in to do our test. It was very correct with very few errors and thankfully the judge liked him as a horse and we ended up with a very respectable mark of 32. Actually one of his best marks with BE!

Onto the Show Jumping, I wasn't worried as am very happy jumping him at this height and thought that although the course was cleverly built with some downhill related distances that we would be fine - I was mistaken! We didn't have the best prep because the person before me had a very nasty fall and so we ended up hanging by the entrance for quite some time. Something which Belv doesn't really like doing, but in we went and quickly into a nice forwards bouncy canter. Jumped the first really well and then I'm not really sure what happened. We got deep to a couple, but nothing horrific and we maintained a nice rhythm and energy all the way round but came away with a very very disappointing 12 faults. I have not had more than one fence down on this horse since 2009! Not ideal and so I was in two minds whether to run him XC or not because we were now not in contention for a placing and the ground was quite hard.

In the end Mum and Tor persuaded me to run which probably was the right thing to do seeing as this may have been my last event on him. Anyway he flew round in his usual Belv style coming very comfortably inside the time!

Thankfully Howick is a pretty local event for us so although I had very early times we didn't have to leave at too much of an unearthly hour! Saying that, we still lhad to leave at 6am, even though I had walked the course the day before!

Belv warmed up very well for the Dressage but unfortunately had 5 minutes too long and so just wasn't giving me his complete attention for the test. That combined with a sloped and tacky (due to the mud) arena meant that we made a number or little errors/mistakes which brought our mark right down. We ended up with 37 which was very fair in the section as it was quite a tough marking judge.

The Show Jumping was a fair track, not too big, not too small and it flowed nicely enough. Had a quick warm up and then in we went. We hit everything on a good stride and popped around for a nice clear. Belv was a little bit 'tappy' but I think that is because he finds it quite small. I'm not complaining though - I quite like this BE100 lark - much more relaxing than 2*!!

Quick change of tack & clothing and it was off to the Cross Country! The aim was to set out like we meant it so that he was going a bit more forwards, rather than sauntering round in a pretty little canter! So 5,4,3,2,1 and off we went! Kicked on more than I have done on his other BE100 runs and he did a lovely round. Very sweet and happy and as it turns out, it was just as well that I kicked on because the time proved quite tight! We finished a very good 14 seconds under the time, although on the downside, I finished on the same score as someone else but they went slower XC and were closer to the optimum and so beat me!

All in all another very successful outing! We finished on our dressage score and came 3rd, gaining 12 foundation points! Belv's next run is Sapey BE100open and then he is heading to Withington to have a crack at a novice! Exciting stuff!

On Wednesday morning we set off at 5am on the fairly long trip down south to Somerley Park Horse Trials to do the CIC** with Jack!

My Dressage was at 10am but we weren't jumping till around 4pm so luckily we didn't have to get there in time to walk the XC first! But on the downside it meant hours and hours of sitting around getting more and more nervous as I waited and getting soaked! It rained pretty much all day! 
Jacks dressage has taken a bit of a knock recently for one reason and another so I wasn't holding any high expectations. He warmed up sweetly enough, but unfortunately was very tense during his test and there were a number or errors. Mainly in his straightness (or lack of!) and we also had an incorrect canter strike off which is very unlike him! But all in all it wasn't too bad and we got a fair mark of 61.7.

After a horribly long wait it was time to Show Jump! The weather was vile and the ground very slippery so the Show Jumping was built fairly small to take this into consideration. Even so it still caused enough problems. Jack however posted another fabulous clear, even if we did have a slightly gung ho moment down a line of 3 fences after I saw a flyer into the first element!

Finally Cross Country time! I was pretty nervous for this because it was only our second event of the season and it was quite a tough track! It was pretty technical in places and the technical bits were big as well!
However I shouldn't have worried, Jack flew round for a superb clear! Made absolutely nothing of the big angled brush palisades at 7, the very spooky water or the massive skinny triple brush to corner combination! Chuffed to bits! He finished strongly and picked up just 8.4 time faults which I was quite pleased with because I didn't really push for the time as I was aiming for a clear! The course caused a lot of problems for the other competitors too with a lot of people getting eliminated or retiring!

So all in all a very good outing! Another double clear from Mr Supplejack! But the good news doesn't end there....it turns out we finished in the top 25% and so were placed 12th and in the money! Result! 

Next outing for Jack is Burnham Market CIC** so let's try and do a similarly good performance!

Whilst Belv snoozed....

Jack got to work....!
The Dressage was very disappointing in the end. He had schooled really really well the day before but unfortunately both he and I became very tense in the test and it did not go to plan and we got a very disappointing 40.5. Generally our flatwork has come one leaps and bounds from last year and is of a good 30's standard. So this obviously doesn't reflect how we have come on over the winter :(

Next up was the Show Jumping (we actually managed to get to jump this time!) It was quite big, well relative to the BE100 courses I have been doing with Belv and as it was our first time out this season I was a little nervous! However he warmed up well so we went into the ring feeling positive! Wow what a horse, he absolutely flew round for a fantastic clear! Thrilled! Although our SJ last year was good, we almost always ended up with 4 faults and this was our first clear SJ at Intermediate!

Finally cross country time! Jack duly posted a fabulous and pretty quick clear and we came home with just 4 time faults which was quite reasonable in the section. We did all the quick routes without any issues and so got our first Intermediate double clear - gaining two points! Our dressage wasn't good enough to get placed, but we ended up 13th which was about half way which I guess isn't too shabby for an official Young Rider OIU21 trial!
So all in all very pleased! Next stop Somerley CIC**!