Stage 2/BBQ Prac/SJ

Yesterday Amelia and Freya took their BHS Stage 2 exam at Usk College which involves theory practical riding flat and show jumping and Lunging. Both felt the exam went reasonably well although Amelia wasn’t impressed with the horses she rode as one was very lazy to jump and the other difficult to canter. One of her horses tried to put a stop in and then jumped the fence with only its front feet. Doesn’t do a lot for you when your trying to maintain your professionalism and you have to have the jump taken apart and removed from underneath you! Anyway Amelia jumped the rest ok and the other horse was a bit better. Freya felt the jumping went well with the two horses she had. It will be about 10 days before they get their results. The exam is in two parts and you can pass or fail either part. In my day they called the results out in front of everybody……..Candidate No * Care Pass, Riding Pass or fail as the case may be, Fortunately I never failed one  but  I saw many a candidate leaving the centre with their fail slip in floods of tears, maybe thats why they don’t do it anymore,  Although I have to say I preferred  to know I don’t think I could cope with waiting 10 days to find out. I took my Riding and Road safety exam in Summerhouse in Gloucester 10 of us went from a local college in a mini bus, 2 failed, It was an awful drive home.

Saturday we started the practices for the Open evening and BBQ. Our first practice was for the gymkhana  we tried out about 10 ponies and I was quite impressed with them. Today we had the first of four practices for the musical ride. Fred and Cazzie decided they did not like the music at all and there were some hair raising moments especially  in the canter, Lucy has been off with some lameness for the last few weeks but I am hoping she will be able to take over from Fred who was a bit of a nightmare for Chloe. Not that Chloe seemed to mind the speed he was going.

Sunday Amelia Jumped Leo at Smugglers Run which is somewhere on top of a mountain near Blackwood, Nice place, lovely flat fields, although I imagine it attracts the snow in the winter but it was a sunny day in fact quite hot. As Amelia was about to go in the ring for the 1.05m I switched on my video camera to find that the battery was completely flat. Amelia and Leo won the class and had one fence down in the jump off of the 1m10 and was 4th.

Posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 12:39 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.