Beau Bayou Blog - May 2017
Keeping the hedgehogs off his withers!
Combined Training
Combined Training
So, in April we qualified as a team for the British Riding Clubs' National Championships - the Festival of the Horse. I was determined to NOT let the team down in my jumping and to canter the whole course. I was also determined not to forget my dressage test - you are not allowed a commander in Championships. The competition was on the Sunday, and I had volunteered to help on the Saturday which turned out to be a really good plan. Not only could I familiarise myself with where to park, I got to walk the course and even buy a commemorative hoodie with all the horses' names on - and Beau's picked out with a little crystal :) Off home afterwards and I tortured Beau with shampoo, and scrubbed my tack clean (I love having a synthetic saddle!). Simon very kindly cleaned and polished my boots for me - it's the first time they have ever seen shoe polish instead of baby wipes and a silicon sponge
The day itself dawned, bright and clear. I had the lorry loaded and horses fed by 6am and Beau plaited and quarter-marked (thanks Auntie Tory) by 7am. He had so much hairspray on his rump i am surprised he could move. Also so much shine spray everywhere else I expected him to slide back out of the lorry like a bar of soap. We collected a fellow CVRC competitor and her pony, and off we went to Aston-le-Walls. I have to say here that the event was very well organised, as you'd expect, and the facilities at Washbrook Farm are perfect with hard-standing for day lorries, lovely surfaces, clear signage and solid fencing.
On arrival we installed Beau's new Masta Protech rug - it claims to warm up their muscles and relax them at the same time. On Beau anyway - it works! He was amazingly relaxed stood at the lorry waiting for me to stop faffing and tack him up. I went and watched as many dressage tests as I could (and videoed CVRC riders of course) to make sure I didn't forget the test, and watched a couple of showjumping rounds too to make sure I didn't have satnav failure in there too
In the dressage warm up I decided to try and piece together all the stuff that's been drummed into me over the past year or so, and try to ride the test of our lives. Entering at A Beau was trotting like a jackhammer, he was light in front and was almost in passage! I was sat there trying desperately to work out what i was doing to achieve this so i could keep it up. I figured it was core engagement (hopefully) so went for that! It must not have been far wrong because by the time we finished I could have cheered - we did achieve the test of our lives! Sadly the score didn't reflect that - scores all day were very low so the judge was consistent, but I honestly thought i'd got my 70%. Ho hum, another time maybe
So we toddled back to change tack for the jumping and install hideous lump of polystyrene called a back protector. I won't jump without one but in the qualifier it had pushed my hat over my eyes so I kept having to pull up to readjust so I could see. Having watched lots of rounds the previous day it was clear that most riders were getting time faults, so that simply couldn't happen today. I adjusted everything, took my hair down and made sure by stretching and posing that it wasn't going to happen again. Hopefully my fellow competitors just thought i was doing some warm up yoga moves. Anyway, into our round and off went the Exocet Missile
Today's unforeseen disaster was I dropped the emergency brake reins and therefore rode the round off a snaffle. Quickly. We did achieve my aim of no time faults and no satnav failure, and i even let him canter every fence from before the start (and almost the barrier out of the arena after the finish) but sadly obliterated the planks for 4 faults. We came 15th in our arena, which I am proud of, but I WISH i'd held the reins. I have bought myself some thinner versions for next time so they're not so much of a handful. I have small hands so when you add gloves and two sets of rubber reins it was bound to happen
It was a really good day in the end. No team ribbons but a couple of our individuals did very very well indeed and deserved their placings. I was proud to be CVRC! And proud of me and Beau - it was a day of personal bests
Whilst there, I met up with an old friend from Cheshire. We used to ride work together for a polo team - ahem, 25 years ago - and have not ridden together since! Here she is :D
Sidesaddle progress
One of my ambitions for a long time has been to ride a dressage test sidesaddle. I hadn't plucked up the courage to do it, so Tory entered me for a My Quest intro test and declared I would ride wonky. Off we went to Onley Grounds near Rugby to give it a go. In hindsight, I should have gone prelim so i could have a rest from sitting trot in the canters! We scored 60% which is not bad considering there were streaks of sunlight on the arena floor, which Beau hates passionately, and I am not very good at sitting to his bouncy trot
In the prelim we fared a little better though he was still tense. Afterwards, in the carpark once untacked, it became clear that his bladder had been fit to burst - no wonder he didn't want to be Valegro!
Tory and Sardra came away with a 1st and a 2nd, and Beau and me managed a 3rd and a 4th - not a bad day's haul :)
Media
We managed a snippet in a Horse and Hound article this month - HorseandHound - which was sub-zero cool :D
Sponsorship
We didn't win the Neue Schule sponsored rider competition, which was a shame for us but very many congratulations to the winner who will have an absolute ball, as Beau and I did with Mollichaff last year. Sponsorship, and not wanting to let the sponsor team down turned me from a neurotic'can't do it', to a neurotic 'i have to do it', into 'i WANT to do it'!
CVRC Spring Training Camp
Each May and August Cherwell Valley Riding Club holds a training camp at Bury Farm EC. They last for three full-on days so horses and humans stay on site. It's like Pony Club camp with added gin! This year was great fun. Tory couldn't go, so very kindly lent me her horse, so I lent Beau to Simon as Parker is not yet travelling. We decided to book for only 2 sessions per day as both ponies are knocking on a bit and not used to being stabled. We packed the ice boots, ice packs and cooling gel to make sure they came home as sound as they went, and I am pleased to report - they did.
Needless to say we all learned so much, jumped lots of fences, ate lots of lovely food at the Bury Farm Cafe, shook our tail feathers at the Saturday night disco and had so much fun with the super-friendly CVRC members. Roll on August! I had better start saving now...
We didn't take many pictures because we spent most of our time riding. But here are a few snippets of Simon the 'Dressage Diva' on Beau, and me on the spotty legend:
Summerhouse EC
In a bid to try and improve my dressage, I went with Tory, Simon and Alison to Summerhouse EC where we all had a schoolmaster lesson. It was really really useful - well worth the drive to Gloucestershire and back. The horses, staff, trainers and facilities were spot on and we all got so much out of the sessions. I learned shoulder in, in canter; how to keep my hands level and what the contact should feel like. The horse I rode was Larry, who knows his job very well. In a schoolmaster lesson the horses are push button - but only if you push the right button! If you don't ask correctly you don't get, it's that simple. I highly recommend a session at Summerhouse. I had Martine Winter-Alsop, and she helped me with the specific things I had told her I needed, as well as identifying a few areas for us to work on that I hadn't thought of. She made the lesson really interesting, and hard work but lots of fun, and so valuable because she was encouraging, confidence giving and friendly. Loved it!!
Now that the summer is here and the show season has begun, I am trying desperately to fit it all in! The two highlights in terms of planning are Quadrille in October and ....
Blenheim International Horse Trials
A dressage to music demonstration at Blenheim! In the way you may have come to expect, we are not billed as super duper experts but rather ordinary people giving it a go. I hope you can come along and watch, and realise that dressage to music is for everyone, not just Ms Dujardin! Also, we want to de-stuffy-ise the whole thing. "Music" is not just defined as kids TV themes or The Entertainer ;)
Ambitions
The day itself dawned, bright and clear. I had the lorry loaded and horses fed by 6am and Beau plaited and quarter-marked (thanks Auntie Tory) by 7am. He had so much hairspray on his rump i am surprised he could move. Also so much shine spray everywhere else I expected him to slide back out of the lorry like a bar of soap. We collected a fellow CVRC competitor and her pony, and off we went to Aston-le-Walls. I have to say here that the event was very well organised, as you'd expect, and the facilities at Washbrook Farm are perfect with hard-standing for day lorries, lovely surfaces, clear signage and solid fencing.
In the dressage warm up I decided to try and piece together all the stuff that's been drummed into me over the past year or so, and try to ride the test of our lives. Entering at A Beau was trotting like a jackhammer, he was light in front and was almost in passage! I was sat there trying desperately to work out what i was doing to achieve this so i could keep it up. I figured it was core engagement (hopefully) so went for that! It must not have been far wrong because by the time we finished I could have cheered - we did achieve the test of our lives! Sadly the score didn't reflect that - scores all day were very low so the judge was consistent, but I honestly thought i'd got my 70%. Ho hum, another time maybe
So we toddled back to change tack for the jumping and install hideous lump of polystyrene called a back protector. I won't jump without one but in the qualifier it had pushed my hat over my eyes so I kept having to pull up to readjust so I could see. Having watched lots of rounds the previous day it was clear that most riders were getting time faults, so that simply couldn't happen today. I adjusted everything, took my hair down and made sure by stretching and posing that it wasn't going to happen again. Hopefully my fellow competitors just thought i was doing some warm up yoga moves. Anyway, into our round and off went the Exocet Missile
Today's unforeseen disaster was I dropped the emergency brake reins and therefore rode the round off a snaffle. Quickly. We did achieve my aim of no time faults and no satnav failure, and i even let him canter every fence from before the start (and almost the barrier out of the arena after the finish) but sadly obliterated the planks for 4 faults. We came 15th in our arena, which I am proud of, but I WISH i'd held the reins. I have bought myself some thinner versions for next time so they're not so much of a handful. I have small hands so when you add gloves and two sets of rubber reins it was bound to happen
It was a really good day in the end. No team ribbons but a couple of our individuals did very very well indeed and deserved their placings. I was proud to be CVRC! And proud of me and Beau - it was a day of personal bests
Whilst there, I met up with an old friend from Cheshire. We used to ride work together for a polo team - ahem, 25 years ago - and have not ridden together since! Here she is :D
Sidesaddle progress
One of my ambitions for a long time has been to ride a dressage test sidesaddle. I hadn't plucked up the courage to do it, so Tory entered me for a My Quest intro test and declared I would ride wonky. Off we went to Onley Grounds near Rugby to give it a go. In hindsight, I should have gone prelim so i could have a rest from sitting trot in the canters! We scored 60% which is not bad considering there were streaks of sunlight on the arena floor, which Beau hates passionately, and I am not very good at sitting to his bouncy trot
In the prelim we fared a little better though he was still tense. Afterwards, in the carpark once untacked, it became clear that his bladder had been fit to burst - no wonder he didn't want to be Valegro!
Tory and Sardra came away with a 1st and a 2nd, and Beau and me managed a 3rd and a 4th - not a bad day's haul :)
Media
We managed a snippet in a Horse and Hound article this month - HorseandHound - which was sub-zero cool :D
Sponsorship
We didn't win the Neue Schule sponsored rider competition, which was a shame for us but very many congratulations to the winner who will have an absolute ball, as Beau and I did with Mollichaff last year. Sponsorship, and not wanting to let the sponsor team down turned me from a neurotic'can't do it', to a neurotic 'i have to do it', into 'i WANT to do it'!
CVRC Spring Training Camp
Each May and August Cherwell Valley Riding Club holds a training camp at Bury Farm EC. They last for three full-on days so horses and humans stay on site. It's like Pony Club camp with added gin! This year was great fun. Tory couldn't go, so very kindly lent me her horse, so I lent Beau to Simon as Parker is not yet travelling. We decided to book for only 2 sessions per day as both ponies are knocking on a bit and not used to being stabled. We packed the ice boots, ice packs and cooling gel to make sure they came home as sound as they went, and I am pleased to report - they did.
Needless to say we all learned so much, jumped lots of fences, ate lots of lovely food at the Bury Farm Cafe, shook our tail feathers at the Saturday night disco and had so much fun with the super-friendly CVRC members. Roll on August! I had better start saving now...
We didn't take many pictures because we spent most of our time riding. But here are a few snippets of Simon the 'Dressage Diva' on Beau, and me on the spotty legend:
Summerhouse EC
In a bid to try and improve my dressage, I went with Tory, Simon and Alison to Summerhouse EC where we all had a schoolmaster lesson. It was really really useful - well worth the drive to Gloucestershire and back. The horses, staff, trainers and facilities were spot on and we all got so much out of the sessions. I learned shoulder in, in canter; how to keep my hands level and what the contact should feel like. The horse I rode was Larry, who knows his job very well. In a schoolmaster lesson the horses are push button - but only if you push the right button! If you don't ask correctly you don't get, it's that simple. I highly recommend a session at Summerhouse. I had Martine Winter-Alsop, and she helped me with the specific things I had told her I needed, as well as identifying a few areas for us to work on that I hadn't thought of. She made the lesson really interesting, and hard work but lots of fun, and so valuable because she was encouraging, confidence giving and friendly. Loved it!!
Now that the summer is here and the show season has begun, I am trying desperately to fit it all in! The two highlights in terms of planning are Quadrille in October and ....
Blenheim International Horse Trials
A dressage to music demonstration at Blenheim! In the way you may have come to expect, we are not billed as super duper experts but rather ordinary people giving it a go. I hope you can come along and watch, and realise that dressage to music is for everyone, not just Ms Dujardin! Also, we want to de-stuffy-ise the whole thing. "Music" is not just defined as kids TV themes or The Entertainer ;)
Ambitions
Dressage: Aaaagh that 70% in a prelim test seems so close and yet SO FAR!!
Posh dressage: Tracy to compete with Beau at Elementary – am still looking for classes…soon my precious ;)
Dressage again: Having discovered that BD are allowing Team Quest members to compete affiliated at prelim – AND having coughed up for full membership for 2017, I am now aiming for regional festivals at novice – though I am not sure what’s involved in that yet. Mainly I'd like to end up at the Veteran and Draught Championships again
Side saddle: We have now done an intro test wonky-ways! We scored 60% so once cannot be enough - I have to get better
Quadrille: Entry in, theme devised, music chosen, costumes in progress, test written :D
an extra one - Jumping: Having now completed 2 competitions with no tears and no snot I feel as though I can start building on those experiences and getting better...
.
TTFN and much love, Tam and Beau xx
May's school report is now out - keeping the hedgehogs off his withers: https://t.co/qeZshMcFiI enjoy! @haynetblog pic.twitter.com/A4ozPJtBEh
— Tamasine Thompson (@BeauBayou) May 29, 2017
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