Teeny TRECcer!

We made it to the last of the winter TREC comps today, the NO decided she wanted a go, so I lost my ride and had to follow them over there in the car......

Ali is looking really happy in this pic, she and her sister managed to argue pretty much the whole way there.....

Anyway, Gandalf was great, as usual, and as Éowyn was in the starter class where lead reins were allowed, I basically just did the whole thing as in-hand obstacles, and she managed to fall off the mounting block

But she still managed to score enough to come 6th (OK, it was only out of 7, but she wasn't last!), and even got 4 tens (thanks to Gandalf )

Sky was of course a total tit, there was no control in the control of paces, she just went as fast as she could, then in the immobility she managed all of 2 seconds before wandering off. She did manage to do the gate quite well though.....

We took advantage of an empty outdoor arena to do a quick bit of work with her afterwards, and she was much better in there, I don't think she likes the indoor school much......

By this time, Éowyn was cold and tired and Ali was only too happy to bring both horses home since she'd had enough of her sister, did a good job with the ride and lead too...

So, not exactly a brilliant performance, but all good experience. Wish we could do some proper TREC comps like we used to do in France, I miss those......

Horse archery championships

Last weekend saw Ali and I climbing blearily into a car full of camping equipment at 6 am. After our nice welcome at the European archery competition a couple of weeks ago, we decided to go along to the British Horseback Archery Association's annual championships. A flurry of emails and phone calls during the week testifying to her ability to stay on a horse had secured Ali a place in the competition.

We had also arranged to pick up a total stranger and fellow HBA enthusiast from Bristol on the way. Susie turned out to be very nice and coincidentally to share some of our fluffier views on such things as bitting and shoeing horses, so the journey passed quickly....

On arrival at the Centre of Horseback Combat, it was raining, so we steeled ourselves to go and stand in a soggy field for the day. We could at least huddle damply under the judge's tent, unlike the people taking part, who got very, very wet.....

Still, by the time it got to Ali's first event, something called the Australian Triple, the rain stopped and the sun even came out, so she managed to stay relatively dry. She got handed her mount, one of only two who can deal with left-handed archers, a nice boy called Jupiter.....

This event turned out to be a lot like the club 2 competition in France, you can carry your arrows in the hand and start with one nocked on the string. She managed to get one in a target, probably should have saved the victory dance until after she'd finished the run though..... ;-) There were 3 targets per run, the first and last angled so the last one was a back shot, that'll need some practise!

Anyway, she actually came fourth, and was very happy to get a rosette :-)


The next event, for the more experienced archers, was something called the Mamluk, which involved doing a long shot, a forward shot,  a Jarmaki, which is a target flat on the ground, a back shot and an offside shot. Great one to photograph!

After that, it was back to the car to extract the aforementioned camping gear and set up camp. As the sun went down, so did the temperature, so we took the only prudent course of action and retired to the pub for a few fortifying pints and some nice hot grub.

The next day dawned chilly, with frost on the ground (and in Ali's hair!) but at least it wasn't raining. That day's event was the Korean competition which everyone did. The main problem here for Ali was that for 4 of the 6 runs you can't start with an arrow nocked, so there are many photos of her doing this....!

So the best we can say about the Korean event is that she got a rosette for taking part.... ;-)

A fun weekend, met some great new people, and a lot of them are Firefly fans as it turns out, so they can't be all bad.....looking forward to the next event. Need to get some serious practise beforehand though ;-)

A somewhat soggy holiday.....

Haven't been around for a couple of weeks as we've been on our annual holiday to the UK. This time we went to Anglesey where wifi apparently hasn't yet been invented......

Stayed in a great holiday cottage near Beaumaris, discovered a great little ruined castle just up the road and a moody windswept beach down the road, yomped the kids around both!

We did the usual tourist stuff, including yomping small children up Snowdon (they were unimpressed)

....although we had to give up and turn back 2kms from the summit due to rather a lot of weather arriving, horizontal sleet, fog etc......Mike had already run up to the top though - and said you couldn't see a damn thing up there when we met him on his was back down!

Rather stunning countryside up there - the bits we could see, anyway.......

Of course we also went riding, a fun ride to the beach where we did some great canters, I managed to get a few shots before the rain arrived and forced me to put the camera away

Map and more photos of that ride here.

Great scenery in Wales, horses everywhere on Anglesey, could be a cool place to live if you were waterproof ;-) The sun did put in an appearance occasionally though, like the day we arrived and the day we left......

Fun in the sun.......

Have had a great day with the ponies and the kids today, Hollie and Polo came to join us and we've been doing some practising.

Started off with a practise of the HT youngsters challenge (full details here), they soon realised that the egg and spoon bit isn't as easy as it looks, neither is one handed riding!

Some more work to be done there.......

Then we moved on to polework, and transitions, gave them something else to think about......

and we finished up the morning session with a bit of jumping the scarey black plastic draped over the pole!

Neither of them was too keen on this at the start, here's some video:

After lunch we went for a little hack, guess who had to walk? Yep, that'd be me as the SNO insisted on riding too......

Sky was full of beans and danced about a bit, especially when the other two went off for a hooley, and the SNO thought this was all great fun! She even did a big spook when the others came back.......and Éowyn laughed. And told her off........

She was grinning the whole time.

Fina's first jumping competition

Had a great day today. Bit of a change from the rain on last week's Rallye, glorious sunshine, we've gone from worrying about keeping the horses dry to worrying about them getting too hot in the sun!

We found the place easily enough, less than an hour's drive away, parked up, unloaded and had our picnic. The girls' class was due to start at 2, but allowing for French faff time this became 3.......Fina got bored of her haynet after an hour or so, so I took her for a little wander round the show in hand. She neighed and neighed at the other horses, the people by the collecting ring thought this was very funny and she soon attracted a crowd of admirers. She didn't seem too stressed though! After a while I took her back to be tacked up, Ali rode her around for a bit, she was cool with that.

Then it was time to walk the course, or jump the course according to Ali and Hollie.....

They then raced off to get on the horses and mill about aimlessly with the rest of the competitors for a bit until they were allowed into the collecting ring. They popped the jumps in there fine,
then there was more milling about until it was time to do the round.

Fina put in a huge jump over the first which was a spread, this surprised Ali somewhat and she had to work hard to steady her after that and dropped down to a trot. Unfortunately she lost too much impulsion so had a refusal at the fourth, but apart from that, Ali got her round (despite some arguing from Missy) and left all the poles up!

Here's the video

Ali was delighted with her and can't wait for the next show.......

Riding lessons....

Continuing the quest to find a decent place for the girls to have lessons here that is less than an hour's drive away, we tried a new riding school today, run by an English friend of a friend.

Very small, only 10 or so horses, no sand school, nothing clever, but run by a BHSAI called Louise who is very nice, teaches well and has endless patience for the SNO "Can I trot now, can I, can I?"

Ali rode a nice big horse called, erm, Angey (?), bit bigger than she's used to!

But she enjoyed her lesson on him

Then it was Éowyn's turn riding Mickey. Right from the start she kept saying " Can I trot now?". Louise was very patient with her.....but eventually she did get to trot and she laughed a lot.....

So I have signed them up for a term's lessons, very reasonable prices too, their website is here.

Aliénor's equine story so far......

I was watching Aliénor ride today and thinking how good she looked, she certainly rides better than I did at eleven, indeed some would say better than I do now. So I decided to do the proud mother thing and look out some photos that chart her equine progress.......I really wish there were some photos of me riding as a child, but my father used to abandon me at the stables gate without ever hanging around to watch.

As we bought our first digital camera just before Ali was born (which was about 4 times the size and weight of my current one, and could store a fraction of the number of photos, I still have it somewhere), she will have no such regrets. So here we go......

This is the first ever time she sat on a pony, aged 1:

We didn't have equines in those days, still lived in the UK. This was on holiday in October 2001.

A year later, she was very taken with this Shire at Northcote Heavy Horse Centre in Lincolnshire, she was happily leading him around!

By this time we had moved to France, and had a little bit of land, so the mother in law very helpfully bought Aliénor a pony......a two year old Shetland filly called Milka, who was trouble from day one.
Looks cute, doesn't she?

Well she wasn't. She thought she should be in charge. She was jealous of anyone that took my attention away from her (including poor Ali). She would rear and charge at anyone who went into her paddock apart from me. When I got Gandalf, she bullied him unmercifully. But she taught me a LOT!
And she was Ali's first pony......

Ali & Milka Nov 2004

However, even after I'd backed her it became obvious she could never be trusted off the lead rein so eventually we swapped her with a bloke from the circus for a 12 year old entire called Flecha. Who was ace. He was calm, friendly, once he'd got to know us he would let Ali do pretty much anything with him and we had a lot of fun.....

Ali & Flecha, May 2006

By this time, at the ripe old age of six, the girl was convinced she could ride the big boy.......and she could!!

She came off him once at that age and remains the only person to have fallen off Gandalf......to date.

She grows like a weed and was soon too big for Flecha so I found him a nice home with some people in the Charente who needed a companion for their Shetland (once he'd been gelded). By this time, I had bought another horse, a Percheron x Anglo Arab called Freya and Ali and I started riding out together. The first hack we did is something I'll never forget (not least because Freya tried to buck me off)

September 2008

Sadly I had to sell Freya, because she needed a lot of work and I didn't have the time, due to the arrival of the SNO the year before. So we went back to sharing Big G and I decided to get a baby horse so I wouldn't be inheriting someone else's mistakes again. When Skyfaxa arrived as a 6 month old foal, Ali helped me with her right from the start.

November 2009

And then a few months later I saw Kinna, and she looked so sad I had to bring her home, so Ali's future horse arrived.

February 2010

At this point I thought we had the full contingent of equines, but as it happened, I was wrong, in April last year the Naughty Nordic Princess arrived, and the rest, as they say, is history......