Summer Open day 2009

Well this is the first year that the Open day was held on a Sunday and not a Saturday. Standing outside on Saturday evening in the pouring down rain I’m so glad I changed it, not that Sunday was looking hopeful,  in the morning whilst building the course for the first display the rain was coming down again. We nearly made the decision to go inside and again I’m so glad we didn’t. The weather turned out to be lovely even the sun was shining. Everyone taking part was here early in the morning washing horses and cleaning tack etc. The most stressful part was getting the course up for the first display but after that everything seemed to run ok. The first display was the show jumping. All six riders looked very smart and four of them managed to have a go at the 4ft upright. The bareback jumping is always quite entertaining and every year Alex manages to fall off, I thought he was going to stay on this year until he rode Candy through the grid with no saddle or bridle and they parted company just before the last fence. Chloe and Carys also took a tumble when both riding Buffy. The Mini Pony Club did a lovely little display and they looked so smart on the ponies and Carys Sarah  Molly and Zoe did a great job of the singing. The Musical ride came next and the Welsh costume were amazing. Carys Morgan made the girls Costumes and I made the hats, out of flower pots. The ‘boys’ wore Rugby shirts shorts and socks. I always feel quite stressed until this display is over as I always think I will get the music wrong and mess it up for them but it all went well and they rode it brilliantly. This was followed by the barrel racing. The riders all wore cowboy outfits and rode in to the music Cotton Eye Joe. The competition was very fast and the winner was Brooke riding Jane follwed by Sophie on Phoebe and Kate on Sid. Lastly we had the Gymkhana. The Bending and One up Polo went well but the Stepping Stones always cause a bit of a problem because the riders have to vault back on, If anyone caught Carys on Video or Photo vaulting a little too enthusiastically onto Hannah and cartwheeling straight over the top please let us know, it was so funny, but we missed it with the video. Carys Morgan just beat Sarah Blake to win the last race but the Sarah’s team The A team were the overall winners with Meg and and Zoe H, I also have a confession to make when I looked back on the video it was the Bumble bees who won the One up Polo as it was Jess who crossed the line first and it should’ve been Chloe but it didn’t make any difference to the overall scores. I have to say I feel really proud of all the riders they made such a big effort and all did so well and thank you all for the lovely card and flowers. It is a lot of work organising it all but so worth it to see everyone put so much effort in. I did try to thank everyone that helped on the day and the help that you give is so important to the running of the event so if I missed anyone out we definitely appreciated your help. The photos are on the website Gallery and we hope to have a DVD of the event available soon.

Posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 1:44 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.