Woodhill Sands HT 24 Sept 2011

I was unsure if I would be ok to ride at Woodhill - or indeed if I should.

But when Frank became unavailable to jump on, I thought I would take the pony anyway, and just play it by ear. However, as I could not get off onto the ground without a lot of pain, I thought it was time for me to take back the reins. Yippee

Dressage; not too bad and he was actually ok warming up. Unfortunately however, I managed to forget to drop my whip so that incurred penalties. However; he did score 62% and was sitting 12th in a very large class.

Show jumping; he jumped very well, just losing his concentration at one point ('Hey mum, Willie is over in THAT direction") to take a rail. So completed his round with 4 faults.

Cross country.
Very wet...raining and the ground was a bit of a bog. One jump later on in the course had had several classes of pre novice jump it already, and I reckon it would have added about another foot onto the size of it... and it was already one of the better sized jumps on the course. The going probably added about a foot onto all the jumps in actual fact.

However, Sampson jumped very well, just taking each jump as it came, with no real problem anywhere on the course. Definitely not the going to make a stand and go for time though! Regardless, and with 16.8 time faults, Sampson pulled up to 7th place.

So not too bad for a first outing for the partnership.