Laura & Ruperts August Blog
By Laura Ridlington
Your news
06 October 2008 15:16
The Yorkshire Riding Centre was defiantly the place to be over the Olympics, apart from Hong Kong of course. Getting up at stupid hours to watch the eventing with the other staff and cheering of the Brits was so much fun. It was great to see Chris on TV and that his team did so well, even if it was the Germans! Rupert’s dressage seemed to be coming on in leaps on bounds and we came second in the British dressage at YRC in both the Novice and Elementary classes. His jumping was still a bit hit and miss with some days he’d be really tiring and others he be stopping or knocking fences down. As Chris was away at the olymipics I’d been having jump lessons with Ali P (Chris’s wife) who thought Rupert was lovely but not easy. I needed to get tough with him as he is more than capable. Yorkshire was still living up to its name and the Sunday event at Richmond was cancelled due to torrential rain that evening. Disappointingly this is yet another event I’d missed. Ali P arranged for me and some of the students there to take are horses over to Richmond for show jump training. Richmond is a very posh venue with lovely big arenas and nice bright show jumps. I think Rupert enjoyed travelling in style and loaded with no fuss into the big YRC lorry. To warm up Rupert was horrid, grinding to a stop repeatedly and starting to make me nervous; thankfully he redeemed himself in the ring and we jumped several very stylish rounds! As I missed so many events I booked me and Rupert into a hunt ride followed by a BBQ, which was hosted in the grounds of a beautiful big farmhouse. I was very naive to think that this would be relaxing and a calm enjoyable bank holiday Monday touring the Yorkshire countryside. My second mistake was to keep Rupert in his KK snaffle … need I say more! I spend the morning being tanked across stubble fields with a field of around 70 horses. I can’t deny that it wasn’t a lot of fun but never the best to way to ease a hangover! After a few hours of galloping (I’m really not joking) we stop off at a pub for a much needed pint before setting off at a fast pace back to the farm for the BQQ and Pimms. Rupert thoroughly enjoyed himself as was up at the front the whole way, he was certainly fit enough to do some PN’s now! Hopefully we will get in some runs in September…
