SNO and a Shetland

Stayed to watch the SNO's lesson this week as she was feeling hard done by. Usually I drop her off and take Ali to the other stables and stay and watch Ali, since it's a 25km round trip to go from one place to the other. But this week I organised it so Ali had her lesson on another day so we could take some pics of Little Miss Showoff......

She really enjoyed her lesson

...indulged in some unauthorised overtaking.....

...and managed not to fall off at canter (love the concentration on her face!)

I suspect the poor ponies enjoyed it rather less, there was much kicking and pulling going on and some of the kids had even been armed with crops. Had to resist the urge to drag some of the little beasts off the ponies' backs and give them a stern talking to. Which is why I prefer not to watch really. But it's the least worst stables round here (where Ali goes they don't take beginners) and her friends from school go, so she is happy.

 

Will just have to explain to her that if she kicks one of mine like they kick those ponies, she won't stop til the next county......!

Gandalf the.......black?

Last week I was given a great excuse to make more fancy dress costumes, i.e. the announcement that they are organising a Halloween Fun Day up at the stables this weekend :-)

So off I toddled to Mondial Tissus, the (not very) local (and very expensive) fabric shop in Bergerac and spent ages looking for something black I could buy lots of without spending a fortune. Which still turned out to involve spending more money than I would have if I'd  invested in a ready made costume on eBay. But where's the fun in that?

Mucho fabric was required due to Ali's desire to go as one of the Nine, or the Ulairi, the Nazgûl, Ringwraiths, Black Riders, servants of the Dark Lord - otherwise known as them big, black-clad scary buggers that chase the Hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring.

So armed with many metres of fabric, I set about constructing a costume. This mainly involved making a basic long tunic, adding dangly sleeves and a hood, and then trashing the whole thing to make it look knackered. Easy! Sorted the hood bit by sticking one of Mike's leather hoods from a LARPing costume under it, pilfered a latex sword from the aforementioned LARPing goodies and the job was a good 'un.......

Although there was one teeny problem - the Black Riders (and the clue is in the name) all rode dark coloured horses and as you know, I've got mainly white ones. I did ask Carole up at the stables if we could use her dark bay Trotter but she didn't think he'd be able to cope with the costume......

So I had to draft in good old Gandalf. He was prepared to go over to the dark side for one photoshoot anyway. We did a dress rehearsal a few days ago and got these shots:

I put that last one on Twitter and the nice people at The One Ring.net retweeted it, so now it's had more retweets than anything else I've ever posted. Someone suggested that Shadowfax had changed sides ;-) Maybe I should get some black paint for the party on Saturday.......

Busy old weekend.....

This weekend was the long-awaited forum get together down here. Jane hosted it up in Bonneville as she has a gite for everyone to stay in. The usual suspects all came along, plus some of the girls from oooop north in Brittany. We took Gandalf and Sky along, Tess brought her little Pottock pony, Kyriane, and we had Jane's two, Maverick and Ocarina. But not all in the same place at the same time, as Ocarina hated the girls on sight and they weren't allowed anywhere near "her" man......

So Saturday morning kicked off with two separate hacks going out, the teenagers (Ali & Caitlin) going out for a somewhat rapid ride, followed by me in the car.....

...and the others at a more sedate pace. As the first hack went so quickly, I was able to nip back and catch the others in action too (OK, so a lot of that action was ponies diving for the grass)

The rainy start to the day gave way to a bit of sun after lunch, and after a few more people had arrived we spent the afternoon messing about trying treeless saddles (one of our members is a rep for Trekker saddles) and sitting around eating cake and drinking tea......

Everyone wanted to have a go on Gandalf......

even the SNO!

Saturday night involved a lot of curry and wine.....including this bottle purchased especially for me ;-)

Then on Sunday, after I'd had to be up at half six to send Ali off to her competition with the club, we spent the morning with our EE instructor giving the odd lesson or two.....

 ...but only getting a little bit wet.

Meanwhile, in St Antoine sur l'Isle, Ali had been putting all that soaring practise to good use on Nahiade and came 6th in both of her classes.

Not entirely sure why they felt the need to include a paddling pool under this jump, but she clearly wasn't bothered by it!

Ali was pleased with her performance, chiefly because Nahiade didn't feel the need to go charging off with her as has happened at previous competitions. And also because when Carole, the instructor, rode her (albeit in a higher class), she only managed 8th.....

 

Some rain fell out of the sky that afternoon though, the paddling pool must have been full! Back at the meet up, we hid indoors, then went out for a drive to collect Ali at the club after the comp and were glad we'd decided not to ride the horses home that day.....

 

So the guests offered to ride them back on Monday morning, when it was dull but dry. I followed in the car (again) to show them some of the tracks and got a couple of nice pics

 

 

All the horses were good, although Sky insisted on seeing if she could get her rider to take her eye off the ball long enough to get her head down to the grass. Business as usual, then......

 

We did kinda miss Chester though, as he went to a new home last week :-(

 

So now I'm back to normality with a heap of soggy washing from Sunday and a kitten who clearly felt dreadfully neglected over the weekend desperate to be in my face all the time ;-)