Kind of like one of those Malory Towers books – or even something by Christine Pullein-Thompson, or the far more saccharine ‘Jill’ books (Jill has two Ponies; A Stable for Jill, etc)…<\/p>\n
The big day arrives and with the predictability that fate is unpredictable… something comes along to scotch the plan.<\/p>\n
The weather.<\/p>\n
We were supposed to be going down to Herefordshire today, for Vin’s (aka Dubious Deal) first Hunter Trial.<\/p>\n
We walked the course yesterday and it was wet; in some places it was boggy, in others it was ‘soft’ – but that was before any horses had gone forwards at 25-30mph.<\/p>\n
There was a notice up that said if there was any rain overnight the Hunter Trial would be cancelled.<\/p>\n
It’s been raining here since 04.00 – mostly light rain but with several periodic bursts of what is known, in technical meteorological circles, as ‘pissing it down’.<\/p>\n
I’ve checked their website; it says the competition is still on.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it’s not been raining down there in Herefordshire?<\/p>\n
Whatever; on the basis of yesterday’s ‘walk through’ I was already in two minds as to whether to compete or not.<\/p>\n
Today, after listening to the rain and remembering that we’d be 34th to start, and imagining what the state of the – already – very wet ground would be like, I’ve decided we’re not going.<\/p>\n
So yay.<\/p>\n
Except… boo.<\/p>\n
Vin needed to go. I needed to go. We needed the run.<\/p>\n
What we didn’t need was skiddy, slippery gallops, ploughed up take-offs and boggy, muddy, tendon-pulling landings.<\/p>\n
This is supposed to be part of Vin’s ‘it’s all fun’ education.<\/p>\n
It’s a high risk sport and I’m not in the game of increasing the risks just for the sake of it.<\/p>\n
So I’m disappointed that I’ve decided we’re not going, but I think it’s the right thing for us.<\/p>\n
Live to fight another day, but disappointment all over the place – in my head at least.<\/p>\n
Thursday we’ve got show jumping training with Mandy at Gracelands.<\/p>\n
Next weekend we’re in a Mercian Teams two-phase at Sapey.<\/p>\n
But I would have liked today’s run first, but not at increased risk.<\/p>\n
And in my eyes the overnight weather and already soft going are good enough reasons in their own right not to go.<\/p>\n
But there’s still a bitter taste in my mouth.<\/p>\n
B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kind of like one of those Malory Towers books – or even something by Christine Pullein-Thompson, or the far more saccharine ‘Jill’ books (Jill has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}