rara007
Well-Known Member
Help for heros themed for charity Ashfields national driving trial 
Well father insisted on arriving on wed so he could be ready for his midafternoon dressage on Friday, 45mins from home
I was in uni so came to visit, just after they'd all set up the stabling- phew 
The ground at this point looked like:
And although people were being towed on, it wasn't awful. I then went home to pack human clothes and decided not to come back to camp as the weather was awful- 5cm of rain overnight left the site very very wet. Getting there Thurs AM my sisters car got stuck in a flood less than a mile from the venue, so I moped around at home being moody that I couldn't get there. Managed to bag a lift up mid afternoon to find the road like:
The bonnet is a rangerover to give you an idea of depth. The defender we used to get my sisters car out still has water stuck in the headlight.
Went for a course walk to find obstacle 1, not a water obstacle looking like:
then the route from 1-2:
If the event would go ahead atall now was clearly in question. People were still being towed on, which left tracks like:
in the stabling field.
Fortunately they decided to run the dressage and go from there. The dressage arena was also damp, clearly. Pip tried very hard, he had a small rear where I told him to do a stand-trot on the very heavy going, and a horse 4-in-hand just set off from the yard when we were at that end of the arena, combined with a pony eating burnt bit of grass meant I saw how well his hind feet were picked out. I messed up the first one handed double deviation, and all the collected was very flat, and the extensions wern't as regular as they should be, but overall he tried very hard. The judges had us in 3rd,6th and 7th, which averaged to 5th with the majority of the class very close.
A bit more course walking and where everyone was walking it now looked like:
in some places.
They did a great job on the ground, scraping off the mud and putting chippings down, as well as taking out number 1 totally and number 2 for the novices and intermediates so it was less churned up. The also shortened section A from 5km to 2.25, gave us an extra 2 mins to walk the 1km walk, an extra 10mins at the halt, and slowed section E from 13km/h to 11.5km/h. I had planned on having mummyR on the back of my carriage, but after walking the course she declared it was too dangerous for her, so I ended up bribing my sister into it! Pips marathon is his weakest phase now, and as we're both just getting used to each other again, as well as it being his first open national, we're trying to really get flowing on and forwards. Slight studding issue as the shortened section A was nearly all roadwork, but then very soft ground for the obstacles.
We were very tense at the start:
Picture thanks to 'Hammy', another young drivers Dad.
Made section A very easily, and as we've previously struggled with the walk really pushed on and was very happy with him to have made it in time, both for the extended due to conditions time and for normal timings. Pootled round the very deep going on the way to obstacle 2. Coming in it was very deep, so I didn't ask for canter, but then during the whole obstacle which was also very deep he couldn't make the transition up to canter so that was pretty slow, and I also hit the finish flag down on the way out Obstacle 3 was on much better ground and we managed to keep up a good pace through out. 4 was the water which was also very deep, and again he struggled to canter which is very unlike him as the water there is his best obstacle! 5 was on a mound which had OK going, 6 a tight posty one, but with OK going, 7 very very deep, but he was fab and as I started in canter we managed to maintain it, very very good pony. Finally 8 was pretty deep, and we were glad to then be on the way to the finish! Despite walking lots of parts we found ourselves with 4.5 mins to spare for the last 400m- and you're not allowed to deviate/stop so we had a very very slow walk to the finish, and made it in on time. He'd barely sweated up and was definately sound, which TBH was the aim in those conditions! When we went to check the scores it turns out all the single ponies really stuggled, and we'd finished in 5th, 1/100th off of 4th. This left us 6th overnight.
Pictures of Dad on the marathon0 his ponies are awesome:
Pip got a well earnt dinner from is 5YO mini-groom, holding it so it didn't get muddy :
Due to the fact we were all somewhat damp the team descision was to not wait to see if we could walk the cones but to go to the pub
The next morning came about very quickly, so had to do speed cones walking/carriage and harness final wipeovers and a lot of pony grooming! As well as marathon Pip does also struggle with cones, and the course was pretty technical, with 3 new style combinations. Number 4 was placed right at the scary pony eating burnt grass. We made it through 1,2,3 cleanly, then as predicted he spooked a tiny bit at the burnt grass, and 4 came down. The rest of the course went well, we managed to keep up a fair pace- the timing is very tight, and although I got a few bad lines from not preparing him enough they all stayed up. Got to the cloverleaf type comination at 18 and was happily going round from A to B, only to find what I thought was B was C, d'oh, so did the extra circle and finished the course clear, but with 10 time pens due to the circle. Surprisingly this meant we were 4th in the cones, and finished overall 5th- 0.1 of a pen behind 4th! The lady who came 4th and me have been within a pen of each other almost every competition in the last 18months
Photo thanks to Mike Watts and InHarness Magazine.
Joined the que of people waiting to be towed out, and 3 hours later were heading home, from our little camp:
As much as I'm a dirty scuffy child- I don't think I've ever been happier to have a shower and a clean dry bed!
The mass cleanup is now in full operation as we're back out in a fortnight for a 2DE And Calvin is going to dressage this weekend
All in all, although it was one of those events where everything went OK but little things prevented it from going wrong I was actually very pleased as I think he shows potential at this level And there's not many ponies who can UA event one weekend, and hold their own at national open level driving the weekend after
Lindors or vodka and diet coke on offer
Well father insisted on arriving on wed so he could be ready for his midafternoon dressage on Friday, 45mins from home
I was in uni so came to visit, just after they'd all set up the stabling- phew The ground at this point looked like:
And although people were being towed on, it wasn't awful. I then went home to pack human clothes and decided not to come back to camp as the weather was awful- 5cm of rain overnight left the site very very wet. Getting there Thurs AM my sisters car got stuck in a flood less than a mile from the venue, so I moped around at home being moody that I couldn't get there. Managed to bag a lift up mid afternoon to find the road like:
The bonnet is a rangerover to give you an idea of depth. The defender we used to get my sisters car out still has water stuck in the headlight.
Went for a course walk to find obstacle 1, not a water obstacle looking like:
then the route from 1-2:
If the event would go ahead atall now was clearly in question. People were still being towed on, which left tracks like:
Fortunately they decided to run the dressage and go from there. The dressage arena was also damp, clearly. Pip tried very hard, he had a small rear where I told him to do a stand-trot on the very heavy going, and a horse 4-in-hand just set off from the yard when we were at that end of the arena, combined with a pony eating burnt bit of grass meant I saw how well his hind feet were picked out. I messed up the first one handed double deviation, and all the collected was very flat, and the extensions wern't as regular as they should be, but overall he tried very hard. The judges had us in 3rd,6th and 7th, which averaged to 5th with the majority of the class very close.
A bit more course walking and where everyone was walking it now looked like:
in some places.
They did a great job on the ground, scraping off the mud and putting chippings down, as well as taking out number 1 totally and number 2 for the novices and intermediates so it was less churned up. The also shortened section A from 5km to 2.25, gave us an extra 2 mins to walk the 1km walk, an extra 10mins at the halt, and slowed section E from 13km/h to 11.5km/h. I had planned on having mummyR on the back of my carriage, but after walking the course she declared it was too dangerous for her, so I ended up bribing my sister into it! Pips marathon is his weakest phase now, and as we're both just getting used to each other again, as well as it being his first open national, we're trying to really get flowing on and forwards. Slight studding issue as the shortened section A was nearly all roadwork, but then very soft ground for the obstacles.
We were very tense at the start:
Picture thanks to 'Hammy', another young drivers Dad.
Made section A very easily, and as we've previously struggled with the walk really pushed on and was very happy with him to have made it in time, both for the extended due to conditions time and for normal timings. Pootled round the very deep going on the way to obstacle 2. Coming in it was very deep, so I didn't ask for canter, but then during the whole obstacle which was also very deep he couldn't make the transition up to canter so that was pretty slow, and I also hit the finish flag down on the way out
Obstacle 3 was on much better ground and we managed to keep up a good pace through out. 4 was the water which was also very deep, and again he struggled to canter which is very unlike him as the water there is his best obstacle! 5 was on a mound which had OK going, 6 a tight posty one, but with OK going, 7 very very deep, but he was fab and as I started in canter we managed to maintain it, very very good pony. Finally 8 was pretty deep, and we were glad to then be on the way to the finish! Despite walking lots of parts we found ourselves with 4.5 mins to spare for the last 400m- and you're not allowed to deviate/stop so we had a very very slow walk to the finish, and made it in on time. He'd barely sweated up and was definately sound, which TBH was the aim in those conditions! When we went to check the scores it turns out all the single ponies really stuggled, and we'd finished in 5th, 1/100th off of 4th. This left us 6th overnight.Pictures of Dad on the marathon0 his ponies are awesome:
Pip got a well earnt dinner from is 5YO mini-groom, holding it so it didn't get muddy
:
Due to the fact we were all somewhat damp the team descision was to not wait to see if we could walk the cones but to go to the pub
The next morning came about very quickly, so had to do speed cones walking/carriage and harness final wipeovers and a lot of pony grooming! As well as marathon Pip does also struggle with cones, and the course was pretty technical, with 3 new style combinations. Number 4 was placed right at the scary pony eating burnt grass. We made it through 1,2,3 cleanly, then as predicted he spooked a tiny bit at the burnt grass, and 4 came down. The rest of the course went well, we managed to keep up a fair pace- the timing is very tight, and although I got a few bad lines from not preparing him enough they all stayed up. Got to the cloverleaf type comination at 18 and was happily going round from A to B, only to find what I thought was B was C, d'oh, so did the extra circle and finished the course clear, but with 10 time pens due to the circle. Surprisingly this meant we were 4th in the cones, and finished overall 5th- 0.1 of a pen behind 4th! The lady who came 4th and me have been within a pen of each other almost every competition in the last 18months
Photo thanks to Mike Watts and InHarness Magazine.
Joined the que of people waiting to be towed out, and 3 hours later were heading home, from our little camp:
As much as I'm a dirty scuffy child- I don't think I've ever been happier to have a shower and a clean dry bed!
The mass cleanup is now in full operation as we're back out in a fortnight for a 2DE
And Calvin is going to dressage this weekend All in all, although it was one of those events where everything went OK but little things prevented it from going wrong I was actually very pleased as I think he shows potential at this level
And there's not many ponies who can UA event one weekend, and hold their own at national open level driving the weekend after Lindors or vodka and diet coke on offer
Hope it runs!?!
