Photo's to follow!

So congratulations to the logistics manager....we survived, and in fact succeeded!! On the Wednesday Animator was his usual fabulous self to come 4th in the Advanced at Aston as his final run before Burghley, and Rowan made a very competent job of his second Intermediate for a pleasing clear XC. We returned from Aston at 5pm, were unpacked and repacked and back on the road for Hartpury by 6.15pm! By 11pm we had worked the horses at Hartpury unpacked and settled the ponies into bed, ready for a 5am alarm and arena familiarization at 6am!! Sprout Thursday morning test was a great improvement and I look forward to him continuing in this vein for the next few weeks before another winter of dressage training to cement his strength in this phase. On Friday I 'nipped' back to Aston to ride Latest Chance in the novice where he finished on his dressage score for 3rd place and he is now qualified to run at Intermediate. Returning to Hartpury to work Willy once before putting him away and working in for his test was an exercise worth doing when he scored a fabulous 40.6 to lie equal third!! My best score ever! We even made a couple of little errors so hopefully I can pin those down to crack into the 30's at Burghley!! Sprout and Willy's show jumping rounds were a huge high for me. They both did super clear rounds and I couldn't have been more proud of their efforts. Pictures to follow! Sprout was first to run cross country and he really gave me a fantastic spin, all bar pilot error at the second water leaving us with a very frustrating 20 penalties. That experience i put to good use on Willy Do who stormed around with just 3.6 time faults to finish 4th in a very hot section indeed. Willy seems to be going from strength to strength at the moment which is hugely exciting for his future, I was so proud of his efforts at Hartpury and hope we can repeat the process next week! So wagons roll, home we headed followed by a rare few days off the yard with one night in Scotland and two in Ireland, on a horse shopping trip. Sadly I didn't find the horse of my dreams but it was an excellent trip and I cant wait to find a world beating 5yr old in the next few months. So from Ireland I came home to head to Tweseldown for Charlotte to do an immaculate job on Jimmy, his first event for 4 years, which they took by storm with a 31 double clear. We then galloped on Friday, went to dressage training in Nottingham on Saturday, jumping in Wootton Bassett on Sunday and took 4 to Wellington to compete on Monday! The Wellington boys had an unremarkable day as far as rosettes went but all did reasonable test, I had a case of 4 fault-itis each having just one rail, and then 3 happy clears XC for Rowan, Jack and Chance who was a debutante at this Intermediate level. I didn't jump Sprout in the Advanced despite a much better test he is being saved for Blenheim. Another hectic week but all made the more exciting by the arrival of a great, great kiwi mate Nick Brooks. Welcome home Nick! So Tuesday has dawned...and all being well we should be loaded and off to Burghley sometime this morning. Watch this space for the biggest event of the year for Team Jacko. Good Luck Willy, Good Luck Luke