Lincoln and Draycott

Following our happy sunny Tweseldown we trekked 3 hours to Lincoln show grounds for Willy Do's second run of the year. In order to prep him for Belton he has had a slightly different program than the others. He really gave of his best in all three phases, the nicest test he's ever done for a slightly disappointing score of 32, he tried seriously hard show jumping out of some fairly deep mud to have an unfortunate 4 faults in the very last combination, and the nicest ride i've had cross country for a fairly speedy 10 time faults. Such is the incredible depth in talent of horses and riders here in the UK at the moment, this commendable performance left us in an unremarkable 17th position! We'd better keep practicing.

From Lincoln on Sunday we had a Team Jacko 'family' outing on Thursday to Draycott in Derbyshire. Bec took Alderman, I had my first ride on Cher and Fran had Radical Approach. They all did reasonable tests both girls tactfully scoring one mark worse than me with 34 for them and 33 for me! Very diplomatic. Alderman and Cher jumped nice clear rounds, and Chesney had a pesky 4 faults. Then Cher and Alderman went on to jump lovely cross country clears for 2nd and 10th places respectively.

Poor Chesney fell foul of the fading light failing to negotiate a rather nasty skinny drop into some woods above a lake, as did many riders competing late in the afternoon. I'm sure there was something about the fence that horses couldn't read once the sun had reached a certain point.

So onwards we roll to Gatcombe today with Jack in the Open Novice and Sprout in the AI....