Tissy and I have not been to a stayover ride for a long time, I think 2018 may have been the last time, and there is nothing I love more than getting to see a different part of the world and camping with my pony! I can’t believe this is the case, but I’ve never actually camped with my van and trailer or gone to a stayover ride by myself without any crew. I guess it’s because when I stay over it’s usually for the longer distance rides. So a trip to Mid Wales for a ride we’ve never done seemed the perfect excuse for Tissy and I to go camping together!

Despite my van trying it’s hardest to prevent our trip to Thetford by deciding to no longer have a functioning drivers door, our garage managed to diagnose, get the part and fix it in time for me to pack everything up on the Thursday. Alas vehicle issues were not the reason we did not make it to Thetford.

I was packed, Estrid was bathed, we were waiting for the farrier to come put our race shoes on. The silver lining here is that my farrier called to cancel, he’d pop her shoes on in the morning before we travelled, so I then proceeded to do our last lunge before a ride. I always lunge for 10mins on the soft and hard as our final prep so I can be confident everything is good to go…everything was not good to go. Estrid was lame.

At first it was so slight, if she was doing her fancy snorting straight line trot up you’d have never have seen a lame stride, but it was obvious anticlockwise on the lunge and it got progressively worse the next day. So that was it, 9 months of prep for our one goal of getting a 1* off the cards for 2026.

Hopefully, this is a short blip for Estrid and we may get to have a few end of season adventures and we’ll go again, hopefully wiser and more experienced next year. But right now I’m pretty sad and feel quite deflated, questioning my life choices…mountain bikes are much easier to keep, fix and train with!

Firstly Tissy was meant to go for her first fun ride of the season but due to another liveries horse getting injured there would have been no other horses turned out to keep Estrid company. No big deal, Tissy has plenty of time left to enjoy some adventures and I could take Estrid instead….lord knows we need as much practice around other horses as we can get.

On the way to said fun ride my van door swung open and then stopped operating as a door altogether so we couldn’t make the journey to the event…not a problem, deploy Plan B. We went for a nice local hack where we then got attacked by the same dog TWICE!

Quite honestly I was relieved to get through the day unscathed and that Estrid still had four functional, legs and a head! All in all quite a lucky day that it wasn’t my horse that got injured in the field, my van door didn’t hit anything and we made it back home safely, and the dog didn’t injure us or itself!

I wouldn’t ordinarily enter competitions so close together, Thetford two weeks ago and Thetford take 2 in two weeks, but I felt like both Estrid and I needed an outing to ensure we went into our next 1* attempt in the best possible frame of mind. I really enjoyed Long Mynd last year and it was perfectly timed for us to get out and do a stress free and hopefully reassuring 40km.

The ride itself did not dissapoint, stunning views, mountain ponies with their foals, hills for days to get those glutes firing, a great training run for us. Estrid was an angel to ride and really professional with her pacing on the long hills both up and down. There were still a few unknows with her vetting even in such a laid back environment, it’s something that we’re just going to have to roll with and hope for the best.

Nevertheless this outing answered some questions for me, gave some reassurances and some doubts but most of all we actually enjoyed our time out together and thoroughly put our failed 1* attempt behind us.

Our misadventure at Thetford left me with a bit of unease as to the solidity of Estrid and I’s relationship. Neither of us had enjoyed our 40km and it felt like we’d fallen out a bit. The next day in the field she was still pretty aloof, turning away from me rather than coming to say hello.

So we went back to basics, gave her some time off and time to herself until she started saying hello again, followed by some ground work and then a few ‘not training’ hacks. A week later and we had our first training session together and we had a great time, back to a calm collaborative Estrid.

I have a couple of outings planned to really put our demons to rest and make sure that I’m going into our next 1* attempt feeling like I’ve done everything to be mentally and physically prepared. Then whatever happens happens.

Well it’s not how it was meant to go, we were eliminated for being out of time at the first vet gate because I (despite having read the rules the week before) forgot you have 15mins to present to the vet instead of the 20mins you have at National. Now first of all, it should not have taken us as long as it did to get to the vet, in an ideal world we’d have never been in this position but we were and it’s entirely on me.

Estrid and I fought our way around our first 40km, neither of us were having fun and with each km I felt like our partnership was cracking a little bit more, it breaks my heart to think about it. I wanted to go at 15kph, statistically the best possible chance I could give her of a successful completion, Estrid wanted to go faster, she got angrier, my riding got uglier, adrenaline was high and she lost her head and I didn’t do anything to change the situation we were in.

We came into vet gate one with a pissed off, high on adrenaline horse that wasn’t thinking straight. I poured too may buckets of water on her, she got cold, her heart rate would settle and then another horse would move or she’d get angry again and then it would shoot up into the 80’s, it took us 9 minutes to present to the vet, at which point she was left alone in the vetting, her eyes went out on stalks, the shaking got worse and our pulse was too high.

I then though lets just chill, stand outside the vetting and take our time, we have one shot and I don’t want to blow it so lets just take all the time we have…I thought we had 20mins. I re-presented at 17mins, we passed the vet and the ground jury walk over to tell me I was out of time… my heart sank, I knew that I’d got it wrong, we only had 15mins to get through the vet gate, so we were eliminated.

I’ve learnt so much, hard lessons that I won’t forget. I should have changed my strategy on the first loop and let Estrid go faster, I should have separated her from the other horses and given her a chance to relax out on course, I should never have poured so much water on her, I shouldn’t have got the rule wrong. But I have a happy healthy horse, I was so grateful to make it to the start line and ride through those FEI flags, we have another opportunity to try again and I am nothing if not resilient and eternally hopeful that we will get there one day.

It’s been a while since I was regularly entering FEI rides and quite a bit has changed. So I thought I’d go through the process for anyone thinking about stepping up to 1* from national.

First of all the FEI have different requirements than EGB to be eligible to compete. The FEI require two rides between 40-79km in one day and two rides from 80-100km as two single day or one single day and one multi day event to be completed within 3 years and no faster than 16kph.

You can then enter a 1* no earlier than 1 year and 6 months following your first novice qualification. Then you must complete 2 rides at each star level within a 3 year period to work up the distances and then continue to maintain your star level.

Next up you need to register the horse and you as an athlete with the FEI, download the FEI horse app and upload your latest vaccination. All subsequent vaccinations will then have to be inputted into the app at the time of the vaccination by your vet. The app is also where you have to record your horses AM & PM temperatures leading up to an event and complete a self-certification form before you arrive at the venue. It’s well worth downloading the FEI rule app as it’s super easy to go check the endurance qualifications and rules. (The irony of this considering what happened in my 1*…if you know you know).

We have had 5 weeks between our 80km at Lavenham and our 100km 1* at Thetford, with almost 3 weeks of that being recovery and tapering there’s only been 2 weeks worth of proper training. Estrid has been 100km ready for a while now so we weren’t worried about improving fitness just maintaining condition and perhaps adding a few more canter sessions in.

The original plan was to take Tissy to the Oakover social ride, however, with Estrid’s 1* so close to fruition I just didn’t want to take the risk of leaving Estrid in the field by herself. Usually there are other horses out at the livery but at the moment, for various reasons, it’s just Estrid and Tissy. So I promised Tissy that her time would come but I took Estrid to my favourite social ride instead (Tissy couldn’t care less about being on her own or in company).

Oakover is such a great route with some decent hills and lovely long canters. To top it off the food van had ice cream and cake!

I find motivating myself to do things so much easier when I have a goal. At 28 Tissy doesn’t really need any goals but structuring her training and having something to look forward to is so much easier for me when we have something to aim for. I’ve wanted to go the the Elan Valley ride for so long and this year the stars have finally aligned so that hopefully Tissy and I can go for an overnight pony party stay.

Entries open on the 8th of July so if you fancy joining us for what will undoubtably be an absolutely stunning ride then here’s the link: https://www.endurancegb.co.uk/Events/Calendar/View?id=3138