Long break

One day I will get my act together and blog consistently. In fairness; I've had a break up, been working 10 hour shifts and trying to get my life together. This season has also been quite up and down and frankly, its hard to write when things go wrong.

So I will catch up...Likely fairly slowly!

Our next outing was Cricklands. 3 days of show jumping, sun and booze. What's not to love?!

It wasn't our weekend. At first, I thought it was due to their new shiny terrifying show jumping. Unicorns....Zebras....Everything.

In the first warm up, Lexi had a stop at fence 2 and then again at fence 7. So that was that. She felt amazing going in so not sure what happened there!

The next morning was on grass. She jumped a fast, cracking clear and I took a bit risk on a turn but thought why not?! And she did it. And won!

Unfortunately; that afternoon we came to grief at the unicorn fence. I still felt it were the fillers at this stage as she had jumped so well in the grass ring that morning.

The next morning, however, when she stopped three times at the first fence (which she had already jumped), I realised there was something amiss and I took her home. She had physio and we found she was really sore through her back. Lesson learnt - treatment before a big show!


We went for some show jumping in between and had a silly stop at the first fence in both classes, but she jumped the rest easily, including a pretty meaty discovery!

Our next trip was back to Wales for Mount Ballon! I was very relieved to see normal show jumps rather than a zoo!

Lexi warmed up well for her dressage but unfortunately struggled a little with the slope in our arena which the judge took as tension and we scored 32.5 which was disappointing.

The show jumping went well but I relaxed a moment too late and we had a silly stop at the last which also cost us 8 time penalties.

I was a little concerned about the cross country; it was bright in places, had a very narrow unwinged fence at the bottom of a slope and another fairly large skinny on top of a big slope down but I felt it was a good course. Lexi set off well, why I thought she would spook at bright XC fences, I don't know! She was brilliant!  A bit wobbly down to the skinny but held her line to it and jumped it.

The water was murky, weedy and muddy and unfortunately she did stop, took a look and a step back then hesitantly went through. Then flew the rest of the course home.

It was a disappointing result and I was a little tearful on the way home - feeling I've truly ruined my cross country machine!

However my grin in the pictures tells a different story!