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