Beaumont TREC

Well yesterday turned out to be a brilliant day. For a start we didn't have to get up at silly o'clock as Isabelle had put us in for an 11am start. So we loaded the boys, stopped Kinna who was trying to follow them up the ramp to the trailer, and set off, arriving at about 9.30. There were a lot of people there, more than I've ever seen at a competition up there, including a team from St Antoine d'Auberoche, a club where one of the teachers is a former national TREC champion!! The weather was a bit better than last Sunday, in fact it got a bit too hot in the afternoon, Tanya ended up putting her socks in the fridge.........

First up was the Control of Paces. So cantering slowly and walking quickly. For the first time, Tanya managed to keep Ches cantering the whole way, but unluckily just had a foot out of the line, so nul points......

Ali was good too, her horse, Karim, one of Isabelle's,  knows his job.....

But we let the side down as G dropped out of canter, being reluctant to leave his mates......

After that, it was on to the PTV, the obstacle course. We were a bit worried about the jumping, because I'm basically crap at it which is why I gave it up as a teenager, but it has to be done, so......
pointed G at the log, he went for it big time and put in a huge jump to make sure he didn't hit it, I said to the audience (another team of Brits) "try not to laugh too much!" as we went for it.......then the hedge, which was tricky as there was a slope right behind it, we made a slightly better job of that, and frankly, I was just glad I stayed on, unlike some of the other competitors who came unstuck at that one. Here's Ali jumping them with considerably more style than me.....

At least we made a decent job of the gate opening, and even got a round of applause from the audience :-)

After that we had the usual 3 hours of doing nothing for the French lunch break. The bacon sarnies cooked in the trailer proved very tasty, sadly the bottle of wine to go with them, which was being brought to us by Mike on his motorbike, fell victim to him having to swerve on to the verge to avoid being flattened by a lorry on the way up, and broke. So we had tea instead........

Saddled up again after lunch to tackle the POR (orienteering). Squinted over the map which involved riding through Beaumont twice, the little maze of streets is difficult to see, and the route we had to copy wasn't easy to follow, but got it copied in the end. Off we went, and we decided to go for it for once as usually we are far too slow. The times were between 6 and 7km/h for the Club teams. Chester in particular was raring to go, so we made it to checkpoint one without being overtaken for once!

Off we went again, through the maze of little cobbled streets in Beaumont, then out into the countryside, which is pretty spectacular out thay way. There were lots of bottles of water at the checkpoints, and buckets for the horses; one house we passed had even left a bucket out and a big sign saying "pour les chevaux". Just as well, as the 24 degrees forecast turned out to be a bit conservative......at least some of the time we were in the woods where it was much cooler.

So we made it back in hopefully not too bad a time, but then as it was already gone 6, we packed up and left befrore the prizegiving. But Jo was there and called us on our way back to say that we'd come third in our category (out of 6) which we are really pleased with, G and I got 407 points which is a personal best. And bitless for the first time too......Looking forward to getting the score sheets so we can see exactly how we did.

A good day for Team Horsetales! Lots more photos  here

We have to do WHAT tomorrow?.....

We're going to do a TREC competition tomorrow at Beaumont and I got a sneak preview this morning as Ali went up  for her Saturday morning lesson. So the course has all the usual stuff, an L bend, slalom, mounting from the right, immobility.......gate opening - hang on, gate opening? Haven't had to do that in a competition before!!!
Quick practise session hastily arranged this afternoon, but it's OK, Gandalf is cool with it:

Although I bet we can't do it that well tomorrow.......

Also the course has two "small" jumps. I videoed Ali doing them this morning, they aren't that small by my standards :-/

So Tanya and I though we'd better practise some jumping, I mean, that's usually the kids' department, right? We're too old for all that stuff.....

Well we've had a right laugh this afternoon, yep, we're terrible at it, luckily the horses know what to do if we vaguely steer them in the right direction. The girls were really helpfully taking photos of how bad we are and telling us what we're doing wrong, this went on for some time, you can imagine....

We've decided we must have a go at this more often.....preferably without the kids around!

Also did a bit of work with the hooley-gan on how to jump on the lead rein nicely after yesterday's shenanigans......

She can do it when she wants to!

Kinna the hooley-gan

As the naughty teenager has been a bit neglected of late, I took her out for a bit of ride and lead with Ches this morning, first thing before it got too hot. Thought we'd go along by the river under the trees in the shade. This turned out to be a bad move, a) because a lot of the path is still under water from all the rain we've had and b) because all that still water means the mozzies have been breeding like crazy....

Anyway, decided to stick with it as water is a TREC obstacle and we do have a comp lined up on Sunday....

So Ches stands there and looks at the water and decides he'd like to turn round and go back now, thanks.

No, I say, let's give it a go, you never know, it might be fun........Nope, says he, I want to go back up the path and eat this nice grass. No come on, Ches, back to the water.....and so on. After a few minutes of this Kinna obviously gets fed up with the whole going round in circles business and decides to investigate this strange wet stuff with a delicate foreleg. Oh, I can put both feet in, she thinks. And have a drink....

No problem! And look, I can splash it all over everyone if I scrape my hooves (had to put the camera away at this point as it's not waterproof.......). Given this example, and that of Choccy racing though the water over and over again and adding to the general wetness of my clothing, Ches decides it's not full of monsters waiting to eat him and wades gamely through the big lake of water to the dryer mudbank opposite. And carries on, not even hesitating at the next lake across out path.

Great, I think, nice hack shaping up after all. Then we come to the tree down across the path. No problem, another bit of TREC practise, Ches steps over it nicely. Not so the teenager, who soars effortlessly over the log and attempts to go hooleying off up the path.....I really need a helmetcam for moments such as this!!

I get her back under control, we carry on. Now the game is every time the dog comes up behind us, try to scoot forwards and take off. Every time the dog goes past us, try to chase after her, in between times, bite Ches on the neck and see if he'll play with me, you get the idea.......

We bounce along the river path in this manner until we come to a completely submerged area, so I backtrack and find a deer trail up into the vineyard next door. At the end of the path is another log, Ches steps over it, the kangaroo on the end of the leadrope takes to the air once more........

Then it's back to the dog baiting game......

Can I chase her? Go on, let me......

We eventually get to the road and turn for home, and a new trick comes out, let's stop dead and see if she'll let me stay here and eat all this grass. I manage to stop Ches before we run out of leadrope and we then have a short battle of wills until she starts moving again. After a while I find a shady spot and stop for some authorised grazing. And we head back, by now it's very hot, so Kinna reverts to dope on a rope mode.......does this look like a troublemaker to you?

Gotta love her, never a dull moment. She's brave though, and if we can get that energy channelled I reckon she'd be a good eventer. Now I just need to find someone mad enough to be her jockey.....

The horse whisperer came back

Have had a great day today, with Adam Shereston again, all about connecting with the horse by sychronising your movement to theirs and asking them to move when it's easiest for them..

We started off in hand, leading them, watching how their legs moved and only asking them to turn when the leg on that side was off the ground, so it was easy for them. So if you want to lead your horse left, wait til his left foreleg is leaving the ground, then ask for the turn.

Then we mounted up and did the same from the saddle, moving our shoulders & hips in time with the horse's movement and asking for the turn when the horse's leg was off the ground.

We also worked on stopping, and he wanted us to do it without pulling on both reins, but by raising and gathering one rein each side as the foreleg on that side came up, to shorten the stride and eventually get the stop

You can use the same technique to alter their speed, Fina tends to rush a lot so he showed us how to slow her down

He spent a lot of time working with Jane and Ocarina on this as she gets very anxious if you pull on her reins. He had her going nice and softly after a while.....

So plenty there for us to work on :-)

He also did a bit on catching Polo, who is usually very wary of strangers, didn't take him long to get him to trust though.....

A very soggy jumping competition......

Trundled off to a pony club near le Bugue today for a little jumping comp, good job we took our wellies!!!

Fina and Polo were super well behaved, Polo got a clear round and Fina had one refusal, basically because she was going so fast she went barreling past a fence before Ali could steer her at it!! I think she rather enjoys her jumping .......

Isabelle's lot from Beaumont were there, so the girls actually had someone who knows what they're doing to walk the course with for once

It rained during the course walk, of course. But stopped as the girls' class started, luckily.
Rather an unusual setting, they'd cut the sand school out of the side of a hill, we were basically in a quarry. Decided to invest in an official photo:

And here's the team shot with all the Beaumontois

Even though they didn't go clear, they still got a rosette, which was nice of the organisers......

By the time Jo's class was on, it was seriously chucking it down.....

So as soon as she'd finished, we left, before the river in the car park got any wider....

House full of wet stinky clothes now......

What I actually do......

Have seen a few of these on Facebook recently, quite like the equestrian one:

and here's a dressage one:

Thought the cat one was very appropriate too.....

Decided to make my own one up, what do you think?

Long reining

Decided to try Sky with the long reins today (well OK, two bits of rope, have lent my long lines to Jane) with a bitless bridle, and she was an absolute star. Ali and Fina came along to give her a lead and she was quite happy to follow along, once she'd realised that snacking was not allowed

We did some trotting, she's pretty fast, I need to get fitter!!

We went all round the village, I thought she might be a bit insecure without someone at her head, but she seemed happy to know I was there behind her.....

She was also OK with Fina cantering off ahead, something I always practise, and she would trot on ahead of Fina.

We even went down to the Boulangerie, funnily enough she was less keen to go on ahead of me once I had some still warm baguettes under my arm!!!

Love my spotty girl :-)

Mares.......

Today Ali and I hacked over to Tanya's as Louise was coming to do a jumping lesson for the girls ahead of their next competition this Sunday. Lovely ride in the sunshine, no problems. When we arrived, Kinna and Sorcier were out on the campsite grazing. Kinna took one look at Fina and decided she didn't want a rival anywhere near Sorcier........so she did lots of this:

Seraphina just stood her ground and weed a lot.....we took Fina up to the jumping paddock and had to shut Kinna in her field. Then Fina decided she wasn't interested in doing that jumping lesson and kept trying to get back down the field to Kinna......Louise eventually got her focussed enough to do some jumping, but she kept swerving sideways to try and go where she wanted to go!

When her mind was on the job though, she juped 70cms no problem......

We also practised some Equifun ahead of the competition we are going to organise next month, this is a relatively new FFE discipline which involves negotiating a series of obstacles as fast as possible. So in the following vid we have the Lasso, the Portes, the Serpent, the Labryinthe and the Slalom (the tarp isn't an official obstacle, just put that in as we had one lying about and the two jumps at the end are just for the hell of it).

Obstacles we have yet to build include the Mât de Cocagne.......

....and the appropriately named Casse Tête!!

No horses, but lots of running....

Continuing the marathonning theme that seems to have taken over this year, today Mike ran the Marathon du Mont St Michel. So we drove all the way up here on Friday, scouted things out and went to the pasta party yesterday, then got up stupid early to take him to the start today. As usual with these things, they organise road closures for maximum disruption and put up helpful little "déviation" signs that abruptly run out when you are in the middle of nowhere. Not to be foiled by this, I joined the queue of bleary eyed long suffering people driving their brightly lycra clad spouse/offspring/friends to the start. And promptly lost them all as I was the only one observing the 50km/h speed limit in all the villages and they didn't seem to think this would apply at 7am on a Sunday morning.......

Caught them up in the end as the police had started directing traffic which had the usual effect of making everything slower. Dropped Mike off in a freezing cold car park, and armed with my shiny new map of the area, set off for our first rendez-vous, in a sleepy costal town. The marathon runs from Cancale all along the bay to Mont St Michel. Unlike the London experience, there wasn't a soul to be seen on the route to start with apart from some bored looking officials. I took Choccy for a walk along the beach whilst we waited and she promptly rolled in what smelled like rotting shellfish.

We went back to the route and found the few other spectators content to stand well away from us, they sure didn't want to be downwind of the dog. Watched most of the marathon go by before Mike appeared, then got the hell out of there as a Breton bagpiper had started up.......

On to the second rendez-vous. This would have been a whole lot easier if some woman hadn't decided to try and drive down a road which had been made one way for the duration of the marathon. She sat there refusing to reverse back up until an irate driver behind me got out to talk to her and it turns out she couldn't reverse her own car. So the other driver had to get his mate to do it!! Finally got to where I wanted to be in time to watch most of the marathon go past again.......

Not so hot on fancy dress at this one, although this chap was up for it

and this guy was running with his dog

Mike didn't want Choccy, can't think why.......

Then it was on to the Mont. It probably would have been quicker to walk the whole way. Sat in a traffic queue for about an hour and a half to get to the shiny new enourmous car park they've just built. Waited ages for a flagging Mike to arrive then ended up yomping about a kilometre of the course with him whilst he found some more energy from somewhere. Have to say it was a spectacular view.....

Got separated for the last km or so and Choccy and I did the fastest walk we've ever done to try to get to the finish when Mike did, but just missed him......

Fab background for the "look I made it" photo!

Then we sat on some rocks and ate the food he'd purloined from the ravataillement tent then went for a wander round the Mont and found a bar.......

Decided to get the navette back to the car park, which although shiny and new is about 4kms from the Mont itself. Got on, and Choccy and I promptly got chucked off again by some jobsworth in a suit "Les chiens ne sont pas permis, Madame.....". Guess he'd caught a whiff of her......

So Choccy and I yomped back to the car park, we drove back to the hotel, snuck her up to our room without a mamber of staff getting close enough to smell her and stuck her in the shower.....then had a shower and changed all my clothes which also smell of eau de fruits de mer pourris......

And there we were thinking a weekend without the kids along would be easier.......

More Pony Club.....

As it's yet another Bank Holiday here in France (there are far too many in May), I got the job of entertaining the Pony Club. We even have a new member, Aurélie, and her little TB, Solium, who is a star.

Went for a little hack first, map and pics here, then came back to mess about with some jumps. Solium and Polo were a bit concerned about the whole tarp over the pole thing, so we practised that and they were soon leaping over it unconcernedly......

Seraphina didn't even look at it funny.......

And Hollie got her Youngster's Challenge filmed for the forum competition:

And it didn't even rain (much). Good day......