Munstead Horse Trials is another almost local event for me, within a 2 hour drive away it feels quite close to home!

Felt strange leaving for a horse trials at 8am, that is almost mid-morning in the world of eventing, especially when you look on facebook and twitter and see people commenting on having to leave their yards at 4am, felt even stranger to go eventing with only one horse on the lorry. I was in fact riding two horses, but the other horse went on his owner’s very smart lorry. Today on board I have Gloris Flight, a lovely big bay horse who was having his first BE run, he has done a couple of unaffiliated events and is now ready to move forward ready for next season.

First to perform was Kevin Maples new horse, a stunning grey called Virtical Line, I have ridden him schooling a couple of times and I will do a couple of events on him this end of the season ready for Kevin to take the ride back next year. Feels strange writing about the end of the season and Next YEAR………cannot believe we are only 13 weeks away from Christmas!

I was riding Virtical Line HC as it was a BE90 and not a BE90Open so the whole day for Teddy was used as a schooling session. I was very happy with his performance, a good dressage of 30 put him in 6^th place after dressage and a lovely double clear was a great start and learning experience for this horse. We had time penalties as I was riding ‘non-competitive’  so I just hack cantered him.  If this had been a true competitive ride, the dressage score and a double clear would of left him in a finishing position of 6^th place.

Flight did a 33.5 dressage, which was slightly off the leader, Blyth Tait scored 16.5 so we knew a red ribbon wasn’t on the cards for us this weekend!  An unlucky pole show jumping and a lovely clear cross country left us finishing just outside the placing’s. I rode Flight xc very steadily as when I took him to an event a few weeks ago he came out the start box a little rushed and he took time to settle, he is a horse with a great future ahead of him so I use these first few BE90 runs as an education rather that to be competitive.

Busy week ahead with 5 horses heading to South of England International and then the BIG MOVE!!!