Preparing for Portugal

Hi everyone,



Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year! I certainly did! The horses all enjoyed their annual xmas feed full of carrots and apples ad even a likit :)

As it's a new year it means business! I am currently writing this from Ireland where my horses are based at the minute. We arrived here at the beginning of January which involved a long ferry over the Irish sea in very bad conditions. It was Ria and Dinky's first time on a boat but they took it all in their stride. I have based myself here purely because of the facilities here at my partner's stables are more suited to getting them super fit and keeping us all dry (yes a massive indoor school)! With the weather being so cold and frozen in England i needed a base to keep them in full fitness as we are heading off to sunny Portugal for 4 weeks jumping the middle of February. As well as the brilliant facilities i get to hack around the Irish countryside with the jumpers doing 3 mile circuits up and down hills.


I haven't done any shows out here but have been hiring various indoor and outdoor show centres for the day. This has been incredibly beneficial, as the young horses start off spooky, so can jump around smaller courses and then build up the height and technicality of the courses as their confidence grows. In fairness they have all been very well behaved. Wendy has been popping around 1m40 tracks sweetly, Dinky 1m25 and Ria has been improving (slowly) around 1m15 tracks. The biggest problem i am having with Ria is she has grown enormously and therefore is very weak in her back end. She tires very quickly jumping, and to help this i have been trotting and cantering her up big hills to help build her back end muscles.


Unfortunately for me, Chester has been sold to an Irish Young Rider this month. They got on very well and she aims him to jump young rider classes at Dublin International Horse Show- so good luck to them both!


I have 3 days left here in Ireland before heading off to Portugal and have a lot left to do..... clip, pack, clean, organise myself and the horses. In total we have 11 horses going to the show in Portugal. This involves travelling back to England, staying overnight, getting the ferry from Dover to calais- staying over night in France, driving to Spain and staying there and then eventually ending up in Portugal! Hopefully it will be hot hot hot!


On this note i better go back out and feed the horses their dinner otherwise i will be in the bad books!


Speak to you from Portugal.


xx