Right, I am in huge amounts of trouble for being soooo late with my blog.....apologies! I almost arrived a bit earlier than this as I did actually write it on the way to France, more on that later...but I then managed to delete the whole thing: the joys of technology!!!

So I’ll back-track a bit to Stockland Lovell, which was my next run after Express Eventing. I had Boy in the Intermediate and Mazy in the Novice; Mazy was rather over enthusiastic in the show jumping but jumped a fantastic clear xc to finish just out of the ribbons. Boy was a star again; he was 10th in the Intermediate after a steady run cross country and a clear show jumping. I also picked up some more silver ware for being the best local rider, all in all a good day at the office!

Bobs next run was Aston advanced where Boy was also contesting his first event at this level. I had some rather interesting times for my dressage with Boy at 9.30 in the morning. As I don’t have any staff at the moment and I am pretty busy teaching and running around madly, the only way that I was going to get there in time was to leave extremely early. The "morning" is actually a bit generous as I didn’t go to bed at all, and drove through the night catching about 10 minutes sleep in a garage at 3am. I arrived at Aston far from fresh faced clutching a Red Bull: and yep, I still managed to miss my time! Overall the horses went well, though no sleep is not conducive to top results! They both did good tests Bobs especially and they cruised round the cross country, making it feel really easy. Boy just had the one fence but Bobs felt a little flat to have a very uncharacteristic 3 fences, I blamed the sleep deprivation!

The following week I had Jack Downey a student of mine come for some work experience, he was a real star and a huge help around the yard. He has a lovely pony called Bacardi who is very tricky but equally talented and Jack is having some real success, he’s just about to do his first Pre Novice and will hopefully go on to do some pony trials next year.

Gatcombe Festival was very relaxing for me, I went up (pony free!!) on Saturday driving my lovely new Jeep (my prize from winning Express Eventing), to do a course walk for some Foreign students of Danny Anholt at Millfield School. At first I was quite nervous and intimidated, but the kids were great and really got into it asking lots of questions and it ended up being really fun. My wonderful farrier Nick Deacon and his wife Liz then took me out to dinner and on Sunday, I spent the day relaxing in the sun at the press tent, watching the show jumping in the main arena! Sounds really ridiculous as you would think that I might actually appreciate having a weekend not sitting on a hundred horses, but just being at an event especially as big and exciting as Gatcombe makes me want to get out there and do it even more and really adds to my hunger for success!

Next stop was Hartpury for Bobs and Boy, both in the CIC***. Bobs just never really got going in his test, he wasn’t naughty at all, but he was in the indoor arena and I think it just made him go into himself a bit and he didn’t move with the expression he normally has, so we decided it just wasn’t his weekend and withdrew him re routing to the HSBC World Cup CIC*** at Harass Du Pin in France. Boy was a star in the dressage not getting a top mark but a very respectable 57 and I was so pleased because he held it together and tried so hard. He fluffed a few of the transitions and one of the changes didn’t happen, but there is so much more to come and he is improving all the time. In the show jumping he literally went airborne over everything jumping a fabulous clear over what was a pretty testing course. I was quite nervous about his first 3 star cross-country but he gave me such a good ride. However, I was furious however that I made a really silly mistake at the influential double of corners, just missing my line and forcing him to have a run out. Totally not his fault and Blenheim is going to be very exciting for him.

So it was a quick turnaround to get Bobs over to Alex Hua Tian’s (who very kindly gave us a lift to France) and get all the paper work ready for our trip across the water. It was a lovely event with the dressage on a surface and best of all it was fantastically hot and sunny! Bobs did a hugely improved test, I think marked a little harshly but being a World Cup class, the standard was a lot higher and it was great to be able to watch some of the best combinations in Europe show us how to do it. Bobs flew round the cross country, probably the fastest I have ever been but again, I just made a slight mistake and floated him on a turn to a very ‘skinny’ skinny, just abandoning him slightly and he had a glance off, he tried to jump and sort of jumped on the fence but I think he just panicked on takeoff as he wasn’t quite sure where I had gone. I was soooo annoyed with myself as I had been having and continued to have such an awesome round but after talking it through with Jon Pitts, I felt a lot more positive as I won’t make the same mistake again and I have to be able to move on but most importantly learn from these things.

So It’s now back to reality and I’m working hard in preparation for Blenheim, Bobs and Boy are both feeling great so fingers crossed it all goes to plan.