Sometimes things with horses just do not go to plan and many say 'horses are great levellers!' One day you are on cloud nine and having the most amazing time and the next you come down with a thud. After having an amazing time at Hickstead we loaded the lorry and set off for The Festival of British Eventing at Gatcombe at 4am and in high spirits, looking forward to the next few days.

We took two BYEH, Northern Territory to contest the four year olds, Gloris Flight for the 5 year olds and Pusiden for the Novice Championships. Acting as groom my fabulous PA Sarah and acting as 'Navigating Trucker' her son ten year old George, who is great for holding horses and filling water buckets, not so great at emptying wheel barrows as he seems to lose control and end up tipping it over the yard before reaching the muck heap!!!

We arrived at Gatcombe before 8am and had a leisurely hour tacking up, walking the show jumping course and watching the other four year olds perform. Nt is a young stallion and he amazes me with his fantastic behaviour, he warmed up well and did a nice test before going straight into the jumping phase. He performed well and I was very pleased with him, unfortunately his owners did not get to see him compete, as although they were on the Gatcombe site, the organisers didn't seem to know where or what was going on at this point of the day and sent them off to the wrong side of the park. Such a shame as they had driven four hours to watch their horse compete and actually saw nothing!!! To make matters worse, when the result went up (top ten horses go through to the next phase), even though he had performed well in both phases the confirmation judge gave him a low score which put us out of the competition.

Similar story with Flight, he performed very well and in my opinion is a true stamp of an eventer, he jumped fantastically, he had a fence down, but quite clearly learnt from his mistake as he gave the next fence plenty of room. Sadly the jumping judge just didn't like him and we weren't in the top ten. These classes are fantastic for getting young horses out & about but it can be quite disheartening when we are competing against very different stamps of horses, horses that are very unlikely going to be event horses of the future yet they are marked higher. 

Pusiden was contesting the Novice Championships having qualified at Eridge. He did a good dressage and I was pleased, slightly tense at times but over all a nice test in a busy atmosphere. Going forward to the sj he carried a score of 37.6. The sj arena at Gatcombe is a main focal point of the event, the tradestands, members marquees etc make it a very busy area. We had an unlucky fence down. 

Sid and I set out into the fantastic Gatcombe Estate, we were asked questions from fence 3, a decent house jump with a near vertical decline on landing, the terrain at Gatcombe causes the course to become quite infuential. Unfortunately I made a rider error, after jumping a box fence down hill to an arrowhead I asked for an extra stride and had a glance off. So cross with myself as I felt I had let Sid down, he jumped round the rest of the course brilliantly and was well up on the time, We walked back to the lorry, me thinking 'what could of been' and kicking myself.

On a positive note, Sid felt awesome and I am confident he is now ready for his first Intermediate, which will be at Wellington later this month.