I took Estrid to her first training session around Cannock chase and I was thrilled with her! There was a tree across our path which meant I couldn’t go along the usual track and so I got entirely lost in the woods trying to find a way around, she went over all sorts of terrain, cambers, steep slopes, boggy bits, rocky sections, the lot and she didn’t put a hoof wrong, not once did she question me and I really enjoyed spending time exploring with her.

For me a short training session is 5-10km, medium 10-20km and long would be 20km+. So really we did a medium training ride as we covered 17km and spent just over 2 hours in the saddle, but this is double what we have been doing so a great place to start the ‘proper’ endurance training, it was also much more technical terrain and steeper than we have been focusing on so more than hard enough work for Estrid who actually completed the session with ease!

I’m slowly building her up with lots more hill work this season compared to last year as we’re hoping to do our first 80km. We don’t really have much access to decent hills (this is where I miss living in Wales) but I’m hoping to trailer out at least twice a month to get some good ascents in. We will probably use the gallops about once a month, for a bit of slow continuous work, especially with the variable weather making ground conditions tricky. I still want to do a bit of cross training with our schooling and some jumping, just to keep things fun and take a bit of (self induced) pressure off our endurance goals and mix it up with fun experiences.

We have never done anything together as a livery yard with our horses. We have quite a variety of horses and activities, from mainly hacking, to mainly schooling, dressage, hunting, and of course, endurance. So it’s rare for us all to be doing something together. I organised Ross Cooper from ROSCA Horsemanship to come to our yard and do a 2hr clinic. Some of the horses on our livery don’t have transport and some don’t feel confident riding in an arena with other people so we decided upon a groundwork clinic to give us more ideas for training activities over winter that wasn’t just lunging over poles.

Although we were still missing two people it was so nice to spend time with our horses together and have a joint experience. Ross spent time with us all individually and gave us some good ideas for proprioception, balance and suppleness training.

It was great practice for Estrid to be in vet gates, with lots of horses she wanted to be friends with milling around and trying to keep her focus on me. Interestingly all of the horses were quite tired after the 2hr session, even the fit hunting and endurance ones, they had all had to use their brains and bodies in a different way and you could tell immediately how beneficial it had been.

I was so relieved that everyone enjoyed, so much so that we’re going to organise another one but groundwork obstacles next time.

Estrid is aimed at a maximum 80-100km this year so she doesn’t need to do specific long canter training or traditional gallops work until next year. But I do like to introduce canter work when we up the distance to 80km. One because 80km of trot is pretty boring and two because I like to up it slowly and I don’t want to start doing gallops work for 120km from no experience whatsoever.

If I had good training grounds, so long hill climbs, good going and a decent network of routes then I wouldn’t need to introduce canter work specifically at a gallops as I would just integrate it into our normal routes. However, the majority of my training is flat, super stony and we don’t have many options so the gallops make for an excellent venue for a consistent, continuous pace.

Estrid will go to the gallops no more than once a month this season and we won’t be doing any sessions that are just canter work focused. What I want to use them for is keeping a nice even rhythm, getting used to what each speed feels like on her so I can instinctively tell the difference between a 13kph trot and a 17kph trot. So we can practice a nice steady controlled canter and importantly learn to use herself properly without being distracted by changes in terrain.

Her first session to the gallops she mainly went round pulling faces with her nose in the air being pretty hollow but we will work on it. We were a little faster than I wanted in the canter but it felt pretty easy for her. So we did 10km in total, 1.5km of walk, 5km of trot (trying to stay between 14-16kph, this will get more specific as she gets better at it and we’ll do one lap at 12kph, one at 16kph, one at 14kph etc.) and keeping the effort even on the flat and the slopes, then 3.5km of canter.

I was really pleased with her, she was keen and needed no encouragement to just keep going. I’m looking forward to introducing canter into our training as she just eats up the ground and it’s so flowy. She was pretty stressed at the end tied to the trailer but this is just something we’ll have to keep working on.

Tissy is pretty remarkable in many ways (I’m biased) but truly in the fact that you can leave her for weeks and then get on for a ride and she has absolutely no issue with this, she isn’t fresh or spooky, she is just the same old Tissy. This trait makes giving her time off super easy. She has always had 3 months ‘off’ a year without any training her whole life. Usually from October to December at the end of a season. In her older years she’s had more like 6 months off from October to March.

I still take her out for a little spin here and there but riding Tissy is meant to be fun for both of us. So in the winter, when it’s dark and wet and I don’t see them in daylight until the weekend, Tissy stays on holiday until we can go on light spring evening adventures, rather than slogging the winter in the school and getting muddy and sweaty. It means I don’t need to clip her, it means she’s not using extra calories training and because she’s out 17hours a day in a hilly field she actually stays very mobile and reasonably well muscled. We still go on a weekend wander every now and then but it’s usually a meandering hack around the block of about 5km.

Tissy is 26 this year and she’s still pretty keen so once the lighter nights come we can start doing our walk work and get her fit enough to enjoy some 16-32km rides through the summer.

Just wow! It is so exciting when you find someone who gets you, gets your horse and gets how to get the best out of you both. This is exactly the experience I had when I took Estrid for our first flatwork lesson at Ingestre stables with Rob Lovatt.

I really want to get Estrid working long and round, powering form behind in a nice even rhythm. Which we sometimes achieve at home but she’s so stressy that anywhere else she’s like a llama.

Rob instantly got us working better within about 30s, the way he explained things to me and simplified exactly what to do made me feel less like I was juggling plates and more like I was just using one simple lever. Now Estrid’s head was like a yo yo, up, down, throw in a bit of sass BUT there was more good relaxed low head with engaged core than there was llama. We were getting some really good supple work between the sass and even better she finished the session relaxed!!!!

I am so excited to work on what we learnt and I can’t wait to go back and keep progressing. I’m going to use dressage tests as a benchmark for our progress, even if I don’t get to competitions just running through them, recording them and comparing, or even doing some online dressage competitions so I get the judges feedback and score. With Estrid hopefully stepping up to 80km this year I don’t want her just to be fit, I need her to be strong and this is a big step in the right direction.

It still boggles my mind that money is such a taboo subject in our society, especially when it is integral to our survival, welfare and enjoyment. It’s not everything, and £100 doesn’t make you happier than £10 but we need to meet our basic needs and if possible have enough left over for fun.

I am naturally a stressy person and I struggle with mental health. In all aspects of life I can counteract this with good preparation and solid systems in place to help me out. My finances play a huge role in how secure and stable I feel so I have a system to make sure that all the horse ‘needs’ are met with minimal day to day brain power from me.

I break this down into fixed monthly bills, which is the easy part, so Livery costs and insurances for horses, trailer and tow vehicle are my only ‘fixed bills’. Then I have fluctuating needs. These are feed, forage, farrier, professionals and fuel. Followed by adventure money, entry fees, lessons and clinics.

I have kept detailed accounts of what I spend in what area for the last 5 years so I have a good idea on what I spend in each category. So at the start of the year I work out how many farrier visits I’ll need, how much feed and haylage, how many rides I plan to enter etc. for the whole year and then divide it by 12 to give me the amount I need to put into my ‘pony fund’ account each month to cover the costs.

I have a little review each month and every quarter to make sure what I’ve set aside is adequate. It just helps me know that what I have in that account is for the horses and what I have in my ‘spend’ account is free to be allocated rather than I need to keep it for a set of shoes or a trip to the feed store.

It was on paper an absolute disaster! If you were told you were merely ‘Sufficient’ or ‘Satisfactory’ with the next level down being ‘insufficient’ it’s safe to say you probably wouldn’t class that as a win. However, despite a score of 59% and a test that looked like a stressed ironing board who couldn’t stay on the track was having a go at Dressage, it was, for me personally, a very successful day.

The whole point of signing up for dressage this winter was so get Estrid out to venue’s in the hope that exposure will reduce her stressiness. The added bonus is it will, in time, improve her balance, suppleness and strength. It is also excellent practice for a mass start, as the warm up arena isn’t dissimilar to a mass start warm up. It has also focused my training and given me deadlines to work towards, which always increases my motivation to train and be consistent.

Estrid was good as gold when I got her off the trailer to walk around the venue, she was then less well behaved for the standing still to tack up process but then an absolute angel in the warm up arena. Her paces were sharp, short and choppy, her nose was in he air and she was tense but she was trying and she didn’t freak out, so a huge win in my book.

For the actual test she was very tense and hollow, she lacked rhythm and suppleness but she went through the motions and we made it through the test without any major dramatics, so another win towards our goals. On the rider side I didn’t forget the test but I did forget to breath and relax and actually ride. I was just steering the ship in the general direction rather than actually properly riding and helping her out, so it was also excellent practice for my nerves and great to reflect back on what I could have done better.

She was particularly sassy when we took her back to the trailer but I’m hoping that this will improve and we may even enter a competition where we can do multiple tests so she gets used to the on/off, in/out that will also reflect vet gated rides.

Such poor performance on paper has given me a good baseline to work towards getting those marks up but most importantly we did it and we will try again until we get it ( I’d really like to score an 8, which is ‘Good’ in dressage terms). I am actively working on letting go of negative thoughts, especially that little voice saying ‘everyone’s watching how bad you are’, dressage is a supreme way to practice this for me, I find it stressful to put this footage out into the world but at the end of the day, I’m doing my best with the skills I have and I’m trying to get better, I’m proud of that. I don’t need to be perfect, I just need to progress.

Goal 1: Finish the year with horses and humans intact. I don’t really have any control of that but it’s a constant hope of mine that I won’t be spending winter rehabbing. In fact only 33% of my 2024 goals are actually controllable, which begs the question am I goal setting wrong and setting myself up for disappointment. The short answer is no, I can put process goals in place to ensure I have done everything possible to achieve what I want and I have to accept that sh*t happens, especially with horses, and without actual external aims I wouldn’t be working towards anything, but it does make me mindful of setting goals within my goals that aren’t as affected be external factors.

So my actual goal 1 is to get Estrid to advanced, which I’m hoping to do with two 80km GER’s so that they also count towards her FEI qualifications. I have pencilled in 13 opportunities to do this from the EGB events schedule that also fit in with my diary so that gives plenty of room for error. If that goes to plan I would like to do her first race ride, whether that be at the National champs, a random ride or a very slim possibility of an end of season 1*.

Tissy has a pretty chilled year and all I want for her is to go to 3 pony parties. I’m going to aim at doing pleasure rides we haven’t done before so we can just enjoy some new routes and views together. I want to continue to keep her as muscled and fit as possible and I want to make the most of the time we have together. She loves getting out and about so I want to make sure I have scheduled the time to do that.

For myself I’d like to capture, review and reflect on my training sessions in more detail. I want to focus on not only what we can do better but also the things that work and highlight them so we keep doing them. I always set a little goal for each time I train but then I frequently forget to think about how it went and make note of that. With Estrid upping her training this year I think it’s going to be super important to monitor her response and I want to do that in a more formal documented manner that I can then look back on. So I have decided to add two columns to my training notebook (Yes, I am the nerd with a training notebook) so I will set a goal for the training, then a column for reviewing the session and another to reflect and set actions. It’s something I did religiously when I was competing at FEI level, but I haven’t gone back to it since 2018 so I think it’s time to bring it back out as it’s also a really nice way of seeing how far you’ve come and appreciating the work put in.

Growing up in Wales I’m no stranger to rain, living up a mountain on the side of a valley meant I also wasn’t a stranger to wind. I’m also famously known to completely forget bad weather when remembering any experiences, a skill or just too many knocks to the head, who knows.

BUT I don’t remember a time where it was so consistently windy with such heavy rain. Despite every other week bringing us a storm with it’s very own name, Estrid, the pony who hates water falling out the sky with a passion, still valiantly went on our yearly Welsh mountain hack to kick off the new season training.

She was a minx to tack up but as soon as I hoped on she had her ears forward and she was keen to go exploring. The wind was deafening and the rain was torrential but she didn’t put a hoof wrong and I couldn’t have been prouder of her behaviour on the trail…..despite her behaviour at the yard making me despair that she may never chill out!

I never regret a ride, even in this kind of weather, it almost feels more adventurous and like we’re conquering something. That said I would love a cold crisp sunny winter hack soon please!

Blimey, 2023 has been a whirlwind and a mixed bag. When I look back at my 2023 Goals, on paper we have achieved everything we set out to do. I wanted to do x3 pleasure rides on Tissy and complete Estrid’s Novice qualifications, both a big fat tick!

In reality 2024 had some pretty high highs but was a mentally tough year for me. There is no concrete reason why I struggled with my mental health this year, nothing really big and bad happened, logically I had so much to be grateful for but my head really struggled to keep above the water. But, with support, I’ve come out the other side and looking back on 2023 I have grown and learnt so much.

We said goodbye to Roo at the start of Spring, financially a decision that needed to be made but he found a wonderful home and I am very grateful that I got the chance to know him and take him through his Novice qualifications.

I jumped out of my comfort zone professionally taking a role as medical lead for a few weeks in Las Vegas at the Air Force trials and Dan took excellent care of the horses while I was away.

I had been thinking about switching to a trailer and tow vehicle for a while to cut down the cost of paying for a lorry and a car but then the lorry decided to need a new engine the morning of Estrid’s first 40km, so we never made it to the ride and the lorry went to the garage. I decided to repair the lorry and buy a tow vehicle, which so far has been a great decision.

We went on a horsey holiday and Estrid did her first cross country jumps and gallop on the beach. Estrid then made it to all her planned rides and despite concerns over making the final heart rate we passed every one and she upgraded to Open by the summer. I toyed with an end of season 80km but skin issues put a stop to riding altogether for August and September so she just had her yearly holiday a bit earlier than planned.

Tissy and I went to some great pleasure rides and the icing on the cake of 2023 was getting to go to Man V Horse and coming over the finish line in our first ever racing finish, we still didn’t beat man despite our best efforts though.

We’ve branched out into other horsey activities with groundwork clinics, cross country hire, dressage and jumping practice and actually these have been the most fun I’ve had with my horses in a long time. My passion and my main focus will be Endurance for years to come I’m sure but I do also want to do more of this stuff, not put all my eggs in the endurance goals basket and just enjoy my time trying new things and having different experiences.