Wychwell Eventing Blog

So I have been sloppy and idle and off the ball in not posting in a very long time. Infact all the time I've had good stuff to talk about I haven't bothered!
It has been a long year in many parts, I feel exhausted from being here there and back here again, over and over.
BUT NOW I'M BACK HOME, HOSED AND VERY HAPPY.
Over the next few weeks I'm going to take a little while to catch up on the blogs, a little bit for you, if you are so kind as to be reading it- THANK YOU. A little bit for me, so I c...
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So I haven't managed to pull myself together enough of an evening to post on here for ages. This is mostly because I've been back and forth across the channel with and without horses like a flipping yo yo.
AND before I left the first time I had a huge push to try and do as much local homework as possible,(local being a rather hazy term in France, up to 2 hrs away; which by standards over here would be a pretty decent trek).

The final push was the 'GRAND NATIONAL DE DRESSAGE' up at Auvers, not q...

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Turnip has another name, (Mr. Potato Head) due to his rather lumpy head with rather a shortage of brain cells. or that's how it seemed to be the first year we had him. He has a rather elegant head now, it never grew with his body and it even look  like some of the cogs in his brain have begun to turn.
   He jumped his first clear at the Renarderie on thursday and he wasn't mad either. I expected him to have a paddy as the Renarderie is practically home turf to him. I expected all  the new jump...
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I had bit of a confidence failure the weekend before last,took Neddy down to Avranches to do 1m05 preparatoire. Had one look at the jumps under lights on slippy ground with a water jumpa and lost my bottle. I swear my shoulder was throbbing in anticipation of another tumble.
Being too scared to ride is not a good place to be but it obviously shouldn't have been as I'd only jumped once since my crash and Ned has never seen a water jump.
I needn't have worried; as luck would have it when I took N...
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Since I've still been hurting from my crash it seemed a good reason to get some dressage practice in, I can't imagine another scenario where I would willingly forfeit an event or even showjumping to spend an entire weekend doing dressage.( I'm not knocking dressage? I'm sure I'd be hooked if I could pull off all the fancy moves.°

So a fortnight ago we set off early saturday to Brittany with Turnip and Charlie for a premier annee dressage class. I had rather high hopes for Turnip as he was so ...
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     As you can see from the photo we have been doing other handy stuff despite feeling sorry for ourselves. Pearl (rather late in the day) has become a lead rein pony, poor dear she hasn't been ridden more than a bareback hike from the field in more than ten years!
 
She finds it very puff making but she enjoys all the brushing and pats she gets from Corrine. Corrine has taken a shine, for the moment to riding or maybe she caught the bug. Poor old doughnut had to be a makeshift pony and do jum...
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Last weekend we were lucky enough to leave these guys at home doing this:

So we could go here:

with these:

and it was all because of this;

Yep sorry everyone for the rather ghastly picture of my purple thunder thigh, but I feel I ought to share some of my pain.
Infact my leg although painful was not a patch on my shoulder; so all horse activity last week (of the riding kind) was knocked on the head and the horses were all turned out as I couldn't even muck out.Thankfully the weather has been,`oh s...
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No, the stag's not real, but he works pretty well from a distance. I'm sure he would more than do the job of spooking the horses on the cross country course which I suppose is the aim of him as he is positioned in the thick of it, amidst the very beautiful undulating parkland of the Haras du Pin.
Poor old Muddy was fooled even close up but then she hasn't the sharpest eyes, poor love. There is a distinct lack of Mini in the picture, our black and tan Jack Russell as she, little cow had disappe...
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It's not all bad being poor, sometimes it makes you a little more creative.
As we came to the end of our haylage it seemed an awful shame and waste to be throwing away all that plastic wrap,so with a few bits of black and green wrap, some Alfa-A bags, old rubble sacks, salvaged pallets and a stapler we got into Blue Peter mode;Turnip and Neddy really appreciated 'these ones we made earlier'!

It all paid off, Ned and Turnip went showjumping at Gavray last weekend and I was very pleased with both...
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