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 ;-)