Camp and Show Jumping
Camp has been great fun despite the weather and its been lovely to have Laura back teaching for a few days. Camp this time was based on eventing and Laura brought some interesting items for them to see and they tacked up for cross country, Dressage and show jumping in the morning. after lunch everyone learn’t their dressage test. In the evening we played bareback polocrosse in the outdoor school after dark (well with arena lights not completely dark). Tuesday was show jumping and indoor cross country pratice in readiness for the one day event on Wednesday and Amelia took them all swimming at Cardiff international fun pool whilst Laura and I had a glass of white wine which ran into two bottles. Today was one of those days when you wished you hadn’t got up. It started well enough with camp getting up early to prepare their horses for the one day event. I should’ve known it was going to go down hill when I burn’t the toast. Dressage in the outdoor school was good – in the pouring down rain and indoor cross country went down very well. Lunchtime I caught a bird – a robin who was stuck inside the mobile, I carried him to the house to show Martha Chloe and Amelia. Martha tried to take a photo which alarmed robin and he flew out of my hand Laura spotted a cat and tried to grab it but I have to say I was quite impressed by the way the pregnant cat left the floor 6 foot from the work surface landed on it and caught the bird in under .000005 of a second. Not impressed at the nerve of it though I chased the cat and tackled it to the ground. Cat with Bird in jaws has the strength of a tiger, having taken all my strength to lever its jaws open whilst it snarled and growled and dug its claws in my arm I managed to retrieve bird and rang Bird Woman Sharon at 2pm who told me she would pick it up when she found her car which was in a multi storey car park in cardiff but she couldn’t remember which floor. After lunch the camp continued with the showjumping and then we did the presentation with everyone doing well and Sarah Blake winning the One Day Event on Lucy. Amelia is thinking to go an visit Jen in Portugal but her passport needs renewing and as we don’t have a single day spare between Friday and the 8th of Aug when she intends to fly we would have to go to Newport to get a passport tomorrow. So I sent her to tescos to get passport pics but tescos in talbot wasn’t working so she had to go to culverhouse cross. In the meantime I went to start the show jumping and found that having been busy with camp all day I had forgot the course plans. So Sarah started whilst I went to print them out. I thought it would be a quiet evening show jumping as the weather was so awful but no it was one of the busist Wednesday’s we have had for ages. Toni apparently used to jump against me years ago and never managed to beat me although I don’t remember this. Anyway Toni’s mare is off work so she brought her older mare and decided to challenge me to jump against her but only in the 1ft 9 as her horse doesn’t jump very big. Seemed like a good idea to me as I haven’t jumped for ages. Having done the course plans I agreed as things seemed under control until the dentist I had completely forgotten about turned up to see two horses one of which was in the field. I took the dentist to see Smartie and sent Malissa out the field to catch Jynx. Whilst Sarah and Adele carried on with the judging. Malissa brought Jynx into a stable and it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn’t Jynx the dentist had come to see but Muppet. Malissa didn’t think she would catch Muppet as he can be difficult so I sent Carys Morgan out to get him, Carys came back 15 mins later without him I asked her if she couldn’t catch him to which she replied ‘Are you sure he is in the field cause I can’t find him’ turned out he was in the next but one stable to Smartie. After checking on the dentist and giving the bird to Sharon at 7pm (must ask how long it took her to find the car!!) I jumped on Phoebe and jumped a clear round Toni went in after me and started off quite quick to which I was thinking I’m gonna be under pressure in the jump off here but the first spread she came to her horse didn’t like and refused to jump it. So I didnt bother with the jump off cause that was a win to me as i wasn’t bothered about beating anyone else. After the jumping I sorted out the passport for my friend up the road to countersign for Amelia only to find that Amelia’s current passport has 2 years left before it expires. So I took some of my masses of lettuce that I have grown and is now growing out of control to my neighbours anyway and shared a much needed bottle of red.
Posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 2:31 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.
