So we got to ride at Le Lion after all..................

Okay, okay so it's not in quite in the capacity we all dream of but I can still say in all honesty that I got to ride at Le Lion d'Angers with a young horse.


It all came about by chance, I had been trawling the internet to find evidence of some “entrainement” show jumping classes at the Haras du Pin which someone told me about over a year ago. Entrainement in France means' a training class' for a young horse or rider wanting to get some experience under their belt before the year starts properly.


Unlike in the UK, France doesn't have a whole heap of unaffiliated shows and events you can get a young horse out to all year round, they just hold a very few early on and a lot of people think nothing of taking a young horse out cold to it's first competition with no experience under its belt whatsoever.


The FFE is the umbrella organisation that controls and organises all competitons whatever your discipline unlike our different bodies of BD, BE and BSJA etc. The FFE system works very well in most respects, particularly in the efficency of the internet entry system which allows you enter the majority of events until only a week before their actual fixture date which must make things a little tricky for the organisers I guess but is super from the rider's point of view when you're not sure what progress your horse is making a month from now!( Yes this bugs me!!)

The only trouble with the FFE is that I suspect it's not so simple to organise events away from their say so. Perhaps I'm wrong in this, perhaps the French have  a different take on unaffiliated events. Whatever the case I miss them dreadfully, oh, for a good old old riding club dressage competiton and a local hunt hunter trial. What more valuable training ground could you ask for?


Anyhow so back to my internet trawling I found a link to a training concours complet (unaffiliated one day event) at Le lion d'Angers in February, Wow ! What an opportunity, to hell it might be three hours drive away ,it would still let me do a little competition at a fantastic world reknowned venue.


Only thing is, it wasn't meant to be,the weather changed, the snow fell and the ground froze.....



I was very naughty and lifted this picture off their site http://www.mondialdulion.com/2011/accueil-fr-1.html to prove snow cancelled play and that Charlie, Red and I actually were there.


However I spoke to a very nice man ,M.  Boutolleau who was organising the competiton and he said that although it was very unlikely they would have the time to reschedule the event if I like dto call back when the weather changed I could probably have the opportunity to go xc schooling in their 'Spring Garden'. This was not the kind of opportunity I was likely to risk loosing.


I may have felt a little jaded after the long drive down but it didn't last long. M. Boutolleau gave us the warmest welcome and a little drive round in his van to show me the lay out. I think in recognition of my long haul  he very kindly decided to let us have a complimentary “on the house” first visit.

So having warmed to his special venue I opened the back of the truck, bent down to put my boots on and found the smallest four clover probably in the whole world.


“ Were things looking up?”


Yes and No. Unfortunately the long trip hadn't left Red and Charlie jaded, it hadn't even smoothed out the rough edges, Charlie was quite the man about town and Red thought it was well worth tossing his tail about for.

So maybe we didn't get to jump the big fences, lets face it all of us are rather a long way off them yet but we did get to jump some very nicely built and educational fences, including a couple of tricky skinny skinnies:


And we did get to enjoy the fantastic ambience of the place, enjoy the beautiful park and woodland of the Haras Nationaux, have a little ride in their posh sand school,

meet the dragons

and pose with some of the fabulous jumps
;

The majority of the jumps were all sheltering around the stables and under trees away from the worst of the winter weather as they so deserved. The quality of their construction is superb and someone applies a lot of imagination to creating the jumps;ducks, dragon and owls, not to mention some considerable talent in carving and constructing the pieces. For pieces of art they no doubt are!