Slighty Soggy Scone BE!

Saturday 24th April was our 2nd BE event of the year at Scone Palace, Perthshire. We were doing the BE90 class and had been drawn 5th to go in our section... which meant a dressage time of 8.24am! So alarm was set for 4am, with as much done the night before (including popping up to walk the XC!), so that we could leave the yard at the back of 6am to get there in time.

It had been raining most of the night and was still quite damp when we got there. A fairly decent shower of rain while we were warming up and doing our test wasn't appreciated by the photographer! ;) I had thought it may play in our favour and make "pokey nose" tuck her nose in for a change, but she was still just as interested in looking around (particularly at the lorries/trailers coming in the road right alongside the arena) and trying to figure out where the peacock noise was coming from!

So not one of our best tests and we scored 44pen, leaving us 23rd out of a section of 26.

Some photos, not all bad, as per usual the best is of a nice, square halt! ;)




At least with the dressage out of the way we could get on to the fun bits! ;) Didn't do too many practice SJs as it was already pretty muddy in the warm up and she doesn't like the mud, it just leads to horrible jumps as she tries to avoid it by jumping the take off spot as well as the fence! ;) Luckily the ground in the arena was holding up better as still fairly early, so she was jumping nicely, although on quite a mission! Had to really hold her back, but got to most of the fences on a nice enough stride, apart from the second last where we both saw a long one and then the last where we just got a little close, but she was very clever and careful and left it up for a clear round. :D




My friend, Lisa was good enough to video our round as well!



So on to the best bit of all- XC! The course had been changed a fair bit since we rode round last year and course designer was taking no prisoners, the first and third fence definitely looked like they were up to max. height! Nothing too horrid on course though apart from a skinny brush fence out of the water as they are allowed to build this 20cm higher than the max height for the class (so 1.10m!) which they had done and I know Heidi "doesn't do brushing through brush"!

Jumped the first fine, a little wiggly leaving the warm up behind to no.2 and then a horrible jump over no.3, but then great round the rest, with a real flyer over the barrel fence at 5! :D A little wussy through the first water (steep ramp in, splash through and out) but fab through the main water and flew the skinny brush leaving me grinning! Came home 7s inside the optimum time for a double clear jumping score! :D This was at least enough to pull us up to eventual 14th place in the class.




Again, Lisa was armed with video camera (she deliberately left it running during the times we were out of sight, hence the "grass & leaves shots" so she could figure out a rought estimate of our time! ;) ) so thank you again to her and here's us in action. :)



So very, very pleased with her jumping. :D Dressage, as always, could be better, but much easier to work on than the jumping. ;) Next is Auchinleck BE90 on Sunday 9th May and then we've been very brave and entered our first BE100 at Scotsburn on Saturday 29th May- eeek!