Olympia and SPOTY

So, we did get  a White Christmas after all, we must have a good 12 inches now!

My day down at Olympia was fun, I was invited to join the British Equestrian Writers Association for lunch which was lovely, and received a lovely photo of our team at WEG which was a really nice surprise and will always be treasured. I had the Parade at Olympia in the evening so had time for a look around the shopping village in between, luckily I had a time limit with the Parade still to come so couldn't let my shopping get out of control! For the Parade we were mounted and I rode Tina Fletchers showjumping horse, I haven't been in a proper jumping saddle in ages!


With a few days in between I had the Sports Personality afterwards which is also always an occasion. With my ticket in hand I had a good seat, third row from the front so a good view. I was surprised at how packed the stadium was, the weather had been really bad and with it being at the NEC I was lucky with only having a few miles to travel. I had an interesting entrance onto the dual carriageway from my lane but luckily with not much traffic I could afford to wheel spin for a few seconds, on the way home as I was just thinking I had made it when I came to the final T junction and again quite a mega wheel spin but this time I had the rear end of the car overtake the front end, interesting and definitely got the adrenalin going!


We are now winding down for Christmas, we will work the horses again tomorrow and then our staff officially leave us for the holiday. The whole family will be on hand to deal with the horses! By the New Year everything should be back to normal and ready for the 2011 season to start, wishing everyone a Great Christmas and New Year :-) x x

Christmas Decoration Fun

It has been a tough couple of weeks with the cold weather but thank goodness it has got a bit milder in the last couple of days. I mustn't really complain as we are very lucky and have an indoor. Speaking of which, we've had some entertainment with the Christmas decorations in the school! Dad put them up last week. The reactions of the horses was very different. Some didn't want to go anywhere near them whereas others made a bee line for them thinking they were edible!

We've been cracking on with training (despite a burst pipe in the water mains - not fun). The older horses definitely feel the weather a lot more and need plenty of time to limber up. The younger ones come out all guns blazing!

Woodlander Rockstar and Woodlander Dornroschen are really coming on and enjoying learning new things. We have been continuing with the piaffe and passage, it takes quite a bit of time for them to build strength for it so it's just a case of incorporating it a bit into each training session to build them up.

Woodlander Wavavoom and Woodlander Farouche are also learning new things, they are going to be aimed for the 5 year old classes next year so are gradually being introduced to some lateral work.

I have Olympia and Sports Personality next week which I am looking forward to. We have the team parade at Olympia and I have made sure I have my ticket for Sports Personality this time. Last year I forgot to confirm my place so I had to try and blag a spare seat. Luckily one came up on the front row which was pretty cool and quite surreal!