Friday 3rd September
The day began with more purpose today, we were up earlier than usual, went for brekky, then headed up to the stables. We then took the horses out for a small walk to loosen them up a little, Becky and Sarah went for longer walks, then hosed of their horses legs, and then we began on the brushing, and washing of Hank in preparation of the vetting and tack check, he seems to have an affinity for stable stains... After preparing all our kit ready for inspection yesterday, and ensuring we had all the essential kit, and anything extra we might need, everything was sorted. We headed down to the vetting at about 9.30, all looking pretty good in our matching kit, all kindly provided by
Horseware and the chaps by
JustChaps , and not-quite-fitting rug that belonged to Harvey. We all passed the vetting, after Harvey decided that he couldn't possibly be more than a few metres away from Lily, and despite a bit of a confusion as to whether flu vac should have been updated within the last 6 or 12 months, due to a mix up between
FITE and FEO rules, turns out 12 was fine, but 6 was recommended. We then hurried up to the tack check with all our kit, and all was well, however I found later that my bridle hadn't been given a tag, these were to check that we used the same tack for the Saturday and Sunday, but this was all sorted later with minimum fuss.
 |
| Anne, Becky, Sarah and me waiting for the vet check |
|
 |
| The key to key Team success = Chocolate |
We then rode out again, and I found a fantastic place to practise my paces, mainly canter, and had a lovely walk down by the river through a wood, and met a friendly farmer who directed me through his farm. I was then going to wander down to the PTV practise area, however I met Sarah and Becky on the way back from their, and they said that it was pretty packed, so we all just trundled back to the village. Lunch was then in the the tent by the main arena rather than the barracks, so that was a bit easier, we then went to the supermarket, literally across the road to stock up on comestibles for our challenge tomorrow. And back to the barracks we went whilst Cheryl was at a breifing and having the official course walk, we had a bit of a chill out and relax, then went back to the village for an early supper and met Cheryl to go and walk the PTV, it was an amazing course, and clearly a lot of effort had gone in to, and I was getting pretty excited already about riding it. Then we headed back to the barracks for an early night in preparation for some very early starts tomorrow...
