Hartpury Festival of Dressage

Our Super-Duo has had it's first outing! It was on Saturday night for the Gala Evening of Hartpury College's Festival of Dressage, and everything went really well - none of us forgot anything! When we started the show the whole audience clapped along with us really loudly - the atmosphere was absolutely electric! Both Becca and I, and especially the horses, loved it - as you can see from the top picture Tinker found the whole thing very exciting!!

I'll try and find some more photos of the show, the two above were the only ones on the website but I'm sure I can track some more down at some point!

We're off to Blenheim Palace tomorrow for the CLA Gamefair. This is one of our most favourite shows so we're really looking forward to it, and hoping for some decent weather! We're doing three shows a day for all three days, a super-duo in the main arena in the morning and then the two solo shows in the afternoon - so although Becca and I have to vault three times a day the horses only have to do two shows a day each - lucky them!!

Hope to see you there!

Love Rosie xx

Capel Manor

We spent last weekend at Capel Manor, North London, surounded by beautiful gardens - you wouldn't have thought the M25 was so close! We were doing another two day solo show for Oakleighs, so it was Rebecca, Ronan, Tim, Tinker and I for the weekend. Having just done the four day duo at the Royal, a two day solo semed like an absolute breeze! All the shows went really well apart from some slight technical hitchs with the music and mics - we seem to be cursed with this at the moment!

On Saturday night we were lucky enough to be entertained by Stevo. Normally a childrens entertainer at the shows he also does exceptional up close magic, with some amazing card tricks - no matter how closely we watched him we couldn't work out how he does it! We also had some lodgers in the tent for the weekend - Stevo's magic rabbits, Merlin and Mysti! The horses were quite bemused by them at first, especially when we started feeding them their carrots!

On the Sunday we went for a wander around all the beautiful gardens, and managed to get lost in the maze! We eventually found the middle but then had to try and work out how to get out again! We finally made it back to the showground in time to see the Wagtail Agility Group, those dogs can really shift! My favourite was Blaze whose best party trick is to catch eight hoops in one go!

We're off to Hartpury College on Saturday night for a Gala Dressage Evening, we're going to be performing our brand new Super-Duo. It's a combination of all the best bits of the two separate duo shows, so fingers crossed we don't get confused and everything runs smoothly!

I'll let you know how it goes!

Rosie xx

Capel Manor

Royal Show and Blenheim Palace Photoshoot

What a busy week we've had! Rebecca, Ronan, Tinker, Tim and I set off for the Royal Show on Wednesday for a four day duo show - our first four dayer ever! Thursday and Friday were a bit slow with only small audiences for the shows, but thankfully we were next to the forge so the farriers made up for it with lots of cheering and whistling! On Saturday we were looking forward to a good show as lots of our friends and family had come to watch. Unfortunately, we got five minutes in to the show when then music system and microphones completely failed - really embarrassing! There was nothing we could do so we just had to leave the arena and wait until it was fixed. So after about ten minutes we went back in and started again - only for exactly the same thing to happen at exactly the same point in the show - really really embarrassing! Thankfully it was fixed properly for the afternoon show, although by then most of our friends had left!

Both the shows went really well on Sunday - despite us all having slightly fuzzy heads and wobbly legs from the young farmers party the night before! We got a bit rained on in the first show, so all the tack, costumes and horses got soaking wet and covered in mud, but the sun shone for our very last show so we finished on a high! Even better, the organisers had asked us if we'd like to perform our final show in the main arena, but due to time constraints and lack of arena preparation we unfortunately had to say no. Maybe next year though...

After we'd packed up we managed to watch the Bolddog Motorbike Display Team in the main arena - some of the jumps they were doing were just amazing! We managed to get a few photos of them - unfortunately they were about the only thing we did take pictures of as we kept forgetting to get the camera out! Sorry!

We did a photo shoot at Blenheim Palace yesterday for the CLA Gamefair at the end of the month, and in between the showers it was great fun! We took the horses for photos on the bridge, in the main arena, and up the steps right in front of the palace! They were both fantastic and made us really proud! After the photos we went for a wander around the grounds and saw the Italian Garden, the Secret Garden and the Orangery. Both the boys were very generous with their gifts, Ronan leaving a huge pile in front of the palace and Tinker leaving one by the Temple of Health in the gardens!!

Click here to see (very few!) photos from the last week.

We're off to Capel Manor in North London on Friday for a two day solo show, so I'll let you know how it goes.

Lots of love

Rosie xx