Well it wasn’t great on paper but in reality it’s not been that bad! We had a great start to the year with a super smooth and productive pre-season training. We introduced water treadmilling to our training plan and it made such a difference, especially when our options are limited during the dark winter nights.

Estrid’s goals for the season were to qualify for an FEI 1* and to do her first CER. We got the first but sadly missed out on the second due to a freak accident at the yard. The silver lining of this was that Tissy got a summer of rides all to herself, and smashed her goal of 3 pleasure rides with a total of 5 pony parties!

Estrid still got to go out and about 5 times too, two short GER’s, an 80km at Windsor and a Pleasure ride at the end of the year. I’m so excited for next year, let’s hope we get that first race ride in the bag!

It was quite a wet and windy weekend in Wales dropping the horses off for their winter break with my parents. Both parents have been adequately drilled in feed schedules and checking for 4 legs and a head…nevertheless it was a very odd feeling returning home without a trailer in tow, and even stranger going straight home from work rather than to the yard.

Hopefully the ponies enjoy their winter holiday and nobody gives me any vet bills for Christmas while Dan and I enjoy ourselves in New Zealand!

Dan and I are off to New Zealand for our honeymoon, so the horses are going to my parents in Wales for an all inclusive stay. I swear I had to pack more stuff for them than myself!

Feed and spare rugs is all they really needed though, and so the van and trailer are all ready to take them to the hills for Christmas.

I really wanted a November pleasure or social ride to take Estrid to, after 6 months of getting her back on track after her accident I just wanted to end the season with a nice outing. We hadn’t been to a pony party since July and I just wanted to go into the winter break knowing we’d had some fun out and about again.

Sport Endurance gave me the perfect opportunity with an end of November social ride. We’d done the Barton Spring ride and enjoyed it so much we went around twice. It also offered a 7 or 12mile option which you could decide at the venue as the additional miles were a separate loop, which made it ideal as a little test run.

I was a little nervous, not because of Estrid but because of my van. It rained all week and the venue was on grass, was I going to get stuck without 4 wheel drive? As I got to the venue my fears were confirmed with a horsebox being towed out the gateway but I needn’t have worried. My van absolutely nailed it and even if we’d got stuck they had a tractor on hand to tow you out anyway.

Estrid felt incredible, I was beaming the whole way round. She was keen, she was forward and she felt powerful. The weather was kind to us and we rode through low dappled light with blue skies overhead. It was the confidence boost I needed that Estrid is ok now and that she can get back into proper training after the winter break.

Thank you so much to the Sport Endurance team, it would have been so easy to cancel the event, but the amount of effort and will power that went into giving us a wonderful day out on our horses was admirable and much appreciated.

It would never cross my mind to have a photoshoot with the horses, I have hundreds of photos but boy am I glad I did. I received a photoshoot with Imogen Moon of Lunar Photography as a gift from a lovely client of mine. Little did I know what a wonderful experience and treasured memory it would become.

Every element from the booking, the pre-shoot call, the prep, the actual photoshoot itself and then the viewing were fun and organised and made me feel extra special. When I see the photos I don’t just see a picture but I feel a memory.

Tissy and I were scheduled to attend our last EGB ride of the season. The Notts group had put on the Ranskill social ride but ‘Claudia’ had other ideas. Torrential rain and wind flooded the route and meant that unfortunately the organisers had to cancel.

In typical British weather style, the day of the ride was absolutely perfect crisp blue skies, but the route was still under water. So we decided to still go out for a little hack from the yard to make the most of the dry.

Money is such a taboo subject in the UK but earning, understanding and managing money is so integral to life. It’s also fundamental to owning horses. Some people like to avoid totalling it up, some people scrimp every penny to keep horses, some people earn enough to not even think about it, but for me understanding my spending, knowing how much my horses cost and having a plan make everything so much easier.

I track every month and do a deep dive every year to see if what I’m putting aside is enough to cover the costs and plan my budget for the year ahead. So here is a video outlining my November-November horse spending over the last year, what everything cost and how I budget and manage my money for horses.

You can’t beat that peaceful feeling of getting the weather window just right so that you have a wonderful ride amongst beautiful scenery!

I think it’s really easy to forget with social media that we only see snippets. I’m guilty of watching peoples reels (Bella Fricker – in particular) and catching myself being envious, when in reality Bella woke up at 4:30am to bake those Brownies and do extra work hours so that she could play with her ponies in daylight, or Georgina (another absolutely incredible endurance rider) just finished back to back on calls as a vet and is raising a family, sneaking in mountain rides when she can. All those beautiful photos and posts we see…probably taken on the weekend in one day and spread out over the socials rather than an endless week of sunshine and fun. People have jobs, responsibilities and what we see are the fun parts.

To have the lives we live we make compromises elsewhere and I just wanted to show what a normal day was for me, and I’m aware I’m supremely privileged that this is what a normal day looks like. But like everyone I make choices based on what I want to prioritise so other aspects of my life, like socialising or eating out are non-existent.

It was raining, fairly windy and a bit cold…three of Estrid’s least favourite things but we had scheduled to have our first ride in 9 weeks together and the weather was not going to stop me!

I have been very lucky to have horses that I can leave in a field for 2 weeks or 3 months, tack up and get on like nothing ever happened. Surprisingly Estrid was no different, she actually seemed pretty excited to be tacked up and stood beautifully to be mounted.

Despite the gloomy weather, being behind her ears and walking through the changing leaves of autumn felt like the loveliest occasion. I’m so grateful to be back on board in time to go on rides through my favourite season!