Wellington was an aptly named event as it turned out a pair of them was exactly what I needed. The day started with me and a full wheelbarrow-load of mucking out falling off a slippery ramp to the muck heap. No damage done but a horrible mess.

Travelling to Wellington was a rather long but quite easy journey, the only really good thing about leaving home at 5am is that there is no traffic on the M25, but it rained for the entire journey. Wellington is a new event for us, we had taken Candi for the BE100, Squid for his first Intermediate and Brooke for the OI, after walking the course I was really impressed, it is very well laid out event, the cross country is well built with enough good questions without being too much for a horse stepping up a level and nice ground.

Starting the day soaking wet is never great, but The Great British Summer was showing us that it really could rain for 24hours solid and it was still raining. I was determined not to get soaked whilst exercising Squid so dug out my waterproof chaps but no sooner had I got on board then it stopped raining and I just got very hot and sweaty, by this time I had realised it would be one of those days and I should have just stayed in bed.

Squid's dressage started well but a mistake in his canter work was enough to unsettle him and the end of his test got very tense, so I was actually quite plesaed with a mark of 35.5.

Candi as always did a lovely test with a mark of 27.5. Unfortunately it all went pear shaped in the showjumping, she has been getting a bit strong recently so i changed her bit to a 3-ring gag, but she let me know in no uncertian terms that this was not to her liking with 2 poles down and a stop, plus time faults, so we changed it back to her usual Waterford snaffle for the xc and she jumped a super clear. Lesson learned!

Squid then had his turn jumping and jumped a good clear round although somehow picked up 6 time faults, this seemed very strange as the course was not causing much trouble with the clock but when we questioned it we were told that we were indeed 6 seconds over and as we had no way to prove otherwise we just had to suck it up. He was fabulous across the country though, skipping round very easily, and one of only 8 horses across the day to be inside the time, which is very exciting for the future, we finished up in the worst of places, 11th, knowing that if we could have proved that we did not in fact have sj time faults, which I am quite sure we didnt, then we would have been 5th. 

After having patiently waited around all day like the pro he is, Brooke did a reasonable dressage of 33.5 and followed with a lovely clear showjumping, I took a definate notice of the clock this time and riding the same route as on Squid, at a similar pace, was 17 seconds faster....hmmm, ah well, mustn't whinge.

The sun had by now come out and turned into a glorious day, which did give us the difficulty of jumping straight into the low sun at a couple of fences which may explain why, having jumped the first half of the course in his usual beautiful style, we had a very bad jump into the water, we got it together in time for the skinny box in the water but somehow it all went wrong and the landing gear didn't come down in time and Brooke and I went for a swim. Both were ok, no cuts or bruises although I will be picking gravel out of my saddle for the forseeable future.

I now know why I keep dry pants in the lorry at all times. It was a sorry way to end the day and particularly with Brooke as with his age it makes us think twice as hard, eventually we will have to call it a day, which is very difficult .

Next on the agenda is British Show jumping Wednesday and then a full weekend eventing at Firle International.