Thursday, December 8, 2011

Dressage Road trip to hawkes bay champs

last fri there was a few of us Taranaki riders that took the long trip to Danevirke for the southern hawkes Bay Dressage champs...its a great road trip but the Gorge at Palmerston north has been totally wiped out so we had to go over the Saddle road which is pretty knarly in a truck, very windy and really steep on each side, but you get to go thru the wind farm and that was pretty cool to see up close how big those wind machines are...
Anyway 5 hours later we arrived...all a bit tired of the travel but glad we made it there all right and horses were great considering I have never truck autumn before she was great and she didn't even poo the whole way, she must have been quite comfortable and happy....
So I am first up on saturday to go the girl in front of me on the draw scratched so I jump on at 7.30am autumn feels great, she does a really nice test after having to warm up for nearly an hour as they had a bit of a stuff up with the judges and surposed to ahve started at 8am I think I rode about 20 past, anyway I am back at the truck by 8.30am and its already sooo hot, I already have sweat running down my back and its only 8.30am!!! going to be a long hot day, thankfully the grounds have trees all around and lots of places to stand and watch under trees while horses can have a bite of grass...my next test doesn't go as well Autumn a bit flat and hurried I am only guessing it was so hot that she just didn't really want to be there since we were riding at 1pm part of the hottest time in the day...thankfully the truck I am in has a nice shower and was so nice to jump in and cool off...that afternoon was so nice, we sat in the grandstand with our bubbles and blue cheese and crackers and got to watch all the advance and grand prix horses do tehre musicals, was so nice and relaxing....first day I came 3rd and 14th...not to bad since there was 33 in the class.
Sunday wasn't going to be my day either my challenge class I just tried to hard that I really lost the whole feel of the test and came 14th again but my last class I really concentrated and we ended up 4th, once again it was a hot day but autumn was really great the whole time and we did have a wonderful horsey girly weekend....rollon the next one can't wait already just got lots of schooling to do so I can do so much better at taranaki champs in january.

1 comment:

Ruth said...

Sounds like you had a nice trip (although the journey there sounds a bit nerve wracking.)
Congrats.