Purston Manor

Jensen continued his good form with a 2nd in the BE100 at Purston, following on from his win at Little Downham 5yr old class. He feels more grown up with each outing and will now head to Upton for the BE100 and then his first Novice at Aston le Walls - exciting!

We also had Jennifer Mason's 6yr old Kiwi doing his first BE100 with me.  He did a nice test and double clear, giving me a great feel cross-country, though I did nearly have a crash on the way home when Claire told me from the live scoring that he got a 21 dressage! Cue a funny voicemail to his owner saying how brilliant he was but to keep some real expectations over his dressage score.  I was worried I would have to keep improving on a 21 and have nowhere to go, but Niff took it that is must have been awful - like in the 50s.... She was consoling herself that he had a lot to learn etc etc and got a very pleasant surprise when she heard the result.  I think I was more surprised to learn that even with a 21 dressage we just made top ten - still a very respectable result as he is pretty green.  I think the judge must have definitely got out of bed on the right side though, as a score of 15 won!

It was speed eventing at it's best as I had to get to the airport at lunchtime to fly home for Johnny Hughes and Annette Langseth's wedding in Meath.  With the thunderstorms the night before, I also decided it was the perfect day to cross-country school, so squeezed that in on the way home too.   Managed to just make my flight, party into the wee hours, catch my flight back the next morning, and was very excited to see my bed on Sunday evening....