Endurance riding is expensive, I know it’s not the most expensive of the equestrian disciplines, but there is no denying that owning and competing horses is a lifestyle choice and a huge financial commitment. I was lucky enough to have parents who funded me every season, across Europe, up and down the country and financially backed my dreams so that they could become reality.

My journey started with the Welsh Endurance Team and that is why we have started a fundraiser to support the Welsh Team at the Home International for Scotland 2022. I want riders to put themselves forward because they love the sport and they dream of competing for their country. I don’t want them to decide not to because they can’t afford it.

Ordinarily, individual riders would fund their transport, stabling, entry fees, accommodation, food, team kit and all those expenses that go alongside competing away. I know that we have had many a generous sponsor over the years, which our National teams are truly grateful for, but I would like to see if we could take it a step further and fund £250 worth of expenses for each rider.

I believe that the Home International is where our Team GBR riders can be made, that it serves as not only a great event in itself, with the opportunity to represent your Nation at every level from Novice to Elite, but it can also be inspiring, give you the Endurance Team bug and make riders dream bigger and aim higher.

If you feel you can donate to the Welsh Endurance Team please follow our Go Fund Me link:

Donate to the Welsh Endurance Team

Or if you want to put on a raffle, do a cake stand, a sponsored challenge or in any way support the Welsh Endurance Team then get in touch.

It’s been 3 months since I started Tissy on her barefoot and boot journey. I’m really impressed with how her feet are looking and holding up. I haven’t tested the Flex boots to their full capacity yet as Tissy is only ridden once or twice a week over winter for 5-10km.

But, for the rides we have been on I’ve been really happy. They both flew off once all full speed gallop up the hill, but I learnt that this was because I hadn’t pushed the fetlock strap right down and because I hadn’t tucked it under the neoprene, meaning the neoprene gaitor was pushing the strap open. We’ve been at Tissy turbo speed on all terrains many times since and not once have they budged.I’ve trimmed a bit of the neoprene gaitor back as there was a lot of excess at the front and this seems to allow for easier doing up.

There’s not a mark on them, we’ve mainly been on road or grass terrain so I’ll be really interested to see how they perform and more stoney tracks like in the forestry. So far they’ve done around 120km and look brand new. I just hose them off and hang them up to dry. They’re also super lightweight, compact and easy to put on so I’m going to carry one as a ‘spare tyre’ when I’m competing on any of my shod horses.

I’m looking forward to doing more training and a few pleasure rides in the boots to see how they continue to perform, but so far I’m really pleased and so is my bank balance.

This has been a much requested video over on our YouTube comments so here it is! A day in my life. Now, firstly let’s all remember that this is just one day, some days are just like this one, some days are totally different. I do what I do because it suits me, so please don’t compare yourself to me or be too judgemental of me, let’s all be kind and supportive to ourselves and eachother.

From January to Easter I have one horse stabled overnight and the others are out 24/7. Usually it’s Tissy who is stabled because she can’t eat enough haylage to maintain her bodyweight so she needs a huuuuge bucket of fibre/speedi beet. However, as I only have two horses with me in the midlands at the moment, Roo was not happy about being left out alone and screamed and run around relentlessy the first 3 nights, resulting in him injuring himself……sigh! So now Roo comes in at night and Tissy stays out with her big bucket in the field.

Tissy seems quite happy with this arrangement, she’s not the biggest fan of being stabled anyway, and Roo has well and truly settled into stabled pony life, getting him out of bed is usually a struggle.

So I make my way to the yard for 6:10am, pop Roo out and muck out the stable, throwing the bedding up so it’s not in the way later as I use my stable for grooming and tacking up. I leave my barrow in there to take to the muck heap later.

I get back home at about 6:40am, I then have 30mins to either exercise or do housework and I alternate the days I do each. At 7:10am (I have an alarm so I’m not constantly clock watching) I get ready for work and leave the house by 7:30am to get to work for an 8:00am start.

I work 5 days a week 8:00 – 4:00pm so I get back to the yard after work at around 4:30pm. I take my wheelbarrow to the muck heap, fill my haynets and prepare the feeds before getting in whichever horse has work to do that evening. On this particular evening I had the Physio so I got Roo in ready for her. Once I’ve ridden/worked whichever horse I’ll give them all their dinner, pull the bed down and tuck Roo in his stable for the night before taking Tissy up her bucket of mushy haylage replacement.

I usually get home between 6:30-7:30pm, have dinner, chill out and then sleep, repeat.

The thought of tack cleaning never really fills me with excitement but once I’m actually doing it I really enjoy the process. Luckily Endurance tack is the easiest tack to clean ever! Firstly you can just dunk it in a bucket and run a quick sponge over it after every ride and secondly for a deeper clean I just put it in the washing machine, easy peasy.

I keep a cloth and tack cleaning spray next to my saddle in the tack room so if they’ve ever had a tough grity, dirty, wet ride then I quickly spray them and give them a wipe. Once they’re dry I run my waterproofing treatment impregnated cloth over the top. Which keeps everything looking ok for about 2-3 months.

But every few months I have to do a ‘deeper’ more thorough clean. I bring everything home to the warm and spend some time methodically cleaning and treating everything. I wash my hi-viz/riding jackets, my gloves, hat liners, chaps, boots, tack, anything that I use often but it’s not properly cleaned often basically.

These are my favourite tack cleaning essentials:

• Belvoir tack cleaning spray
• Belvoir conditioning soap
• Belvoir intensive conditioning balsam
• G-wax (Waterproofing) which sadly I can’t seem to find a link for….so I have no idea what I’m going to replace it with when it runs out! Suggestiong anyone? Though it could be this stuff packaged differently?

It would be cool to hear if anyone has a ‘maintenance cleaning’ and ‘deep cleaning’ routine for their tack and gear? Top tips or favourite products?

I love January! No, I mean it, I’m serious….I know horse owners aren’t meant to like winter but I just love the fresh start, the hope, optimism and excitement of the coming year. I know that’s so cliché but hey it gives me so much motivation.

Every year in December I go back to my parents house in Mid Wales, where the hacking is out of this world and even the easiest route is a 200m elevation climb. In the run up to the trip I’ve usually done 6 weeks of the basic training, pessoa lunging, schooling, ground work, short walk hacks, that kind if thing. All in preparation for my big hill training to kick off the coming seasons training cycles.

I like to split my year into cycles of 6 weeks. I choose an end of season main goal and work backwards from there. My priority is to peak training for that end goal with mini peaks along the way. It’s really important to me that I don’t over compete my horses but also that I don’t over train, so rest is planned with as much thought as the actual work itself.

Each cycle I shift the training focus, in humans that’s the best way to get a well rounded, fit athlete whilst minimising injury risk. This means that for 6 weeks the main focus will be on long slow and hard hacks (like those Welsh hills) then for the next 6 weeks it would shift to faster, easier and shorter work, upping the time in faster gaits, mix it up with continuous and intervals, pull the schooling focus in and out, switch up the surfaces, that kind of thing. It means no block of training is the same and I have a logical system of increasing training load. Usually based on high intensity, low volume or low intensity, high volume.

Qantas has now been on rehab since the 5th of August 2021 after he came out the field hopping lame, barely being able to walk. It wasn’t long after his pleasure ride at Cirencester, where his improvement in behaviour had given me so much hope and excitement for the rest of the season.

It turns out that maybe his behaviour over the last year was potentially him trying to tell us he was in pain. I did everything I could when his behaviour went haywire to check that it wasn’t pain: Physio, Farrier, Vet, Saddle, Bridle, Feed, Rest, Different training……the list goes on. But everything came back as sound and fit.

Luckily due to staying in Wales to avoid mud fever and sarcoid surgery Qantas was only ridden for about 8-10 weeks over the last year so I don’t feel too bad about the likelihood that we were missing something. His behaviour one day would be exemplary, he was lovely to train and such a happy horse, the next I would be flying through the air after an almighty spook and he wouldn’t stand still to do anything for a second.

He has a genetic abnormality on the bony landscape of his shoulder, which in simple terms means there isn’t a groove for his biceps tendon to sit in, so rather than the tendon being round like a cable it’s flat and thin across the joint. In August, somehow whilst out in the field he frayed his biceps tendon, which I’m very thankful was not a complete rupture. This made his shoulder very unstable.

Fast forward and he’s been at my parents home in Wales, as the ground and landscape is much better for his recovery, for three months. He is now sound, running around happily in the field but his shoulder is still quite unstable on a slope. We’re giving him the time and eventually the very slow return to work he needs to see how he goes. But for now he’ll stay in Wales and we will wait and see if the shoulder fully recovers.

The excitement I feel when the ride calendar for the next season comes out is slightly embarrassing. You would have thought that the novelty would have worn off by now, but no, I absolutely love planning!! Which I’m well aware is a pretty useless venture when it comes to horses…..or maybe they’re perfect because they allow me to plan over and over again by messing up the original plan.

Anyway, I like to work backwards in my planning. I have a long term goal: Compete at a Championship for Team GBR, then I list all the steps I need to get there and that’s how I break every year down and plan each season.

So for 2022 I would like to upgrade Roo from Novice to advanced. He has one 40km under his belt so I need two 40km’s and I’d like to do one two day 80km and a one day 80km. I like to do the minimum amount of competition miles I can for longevity sake so in an ideal world next year, Roo will only compete four times. If we achieve that, it sets us up nicely for his first 1* in 2023.

Once I have the years goal: Upgrade to advanced, and how to do it. I then look at the ride schedule and my calendar and see which rides are closest (saves money on fuel and accommodation), which rides fit in around my work and anything already booked in, and then which rides work with the correct spacing for my goal.

I then look at a specific season goal. So I know for my long term plan my goal is to upgrade to advanced but I also like to have a goal for that particular year, something to work towards and set up my training schedule to peak around. For Roo this is going for Welsh Team selection for the Home International in Scotland. My year goals are usually something like this, or go to one of the big events, stay over and get used to the atmosphere, anything that is going to set them up for success in a Championship environment really.

Based on that I then work backwards and space all my rides out by about 6 weeks, so I can then switch my training block after every competition. This then gives me the dates of the rides I want to do which allows me to work backwards from the first one to plan the pre-season training schedule.

There are Plan B’s, C’s, D’s and fly by the seat of your pants plans but having some structure and awareness of what I want to achieve really helps me stay motivated and enjoy what I’m doing.

I get a few questions about what life is like on a DIY livery yard. I’m not exactly the most experienced person to give a well rounded view as I’ve been incredibly lucky to only ever experienced one yard for the last 9 years and it’s been wonderful. Before that we had our own stables and grazing at home where my parents live.

When I moved away from home my prerequisite was 24/7 365days a year turnout, which I’m now aware I was very very lucky to find as most yards, although they do have 365day a year turnout do restrict grazing and stabling at night over winter is compulsory.

So at the yard I’m at we have both winter and summer turnout fields which gives the grazing that much needed recovery and allows us to have unrestricted turnout all year. I’ve heard many a story of strict rules and routines at livery yards but mine is very laid back, we get to care for our horses exactly how we want and the only input the yard owner has is to say when we move from summer to winter grazing.

We also get to do as much maintenance on our fields as we like and care for it as if it was our own, which I quite enjoy but also if you didn’t want to do that then you don’t have to either. We only have 12 horses at the livery and we’re super lucky that everyone gets on well, are very friendly and we all care for each others horses if needed. For me, especially when I moved away from home it was like having another family.

Now we don’t have fancy facilities like individual tack lockers, a solarium, horsewalker, wash bay, hot water, tea station and all the other amazing wish list items that you see on so many yards on social media but we do have a good all weather school, which because there are so few of us you rarely have to share, enough space for all our individual equipment, hay and bedding, alongside trailer/lorry parking.

We never have to pay extra for turnout or checking haynets etc as everyone just mucks in and helps out and everything is included in our monthly fee.

I do miss having my own yard and turnout, getting up in the morning and being able to see your horses out the window is a real privilege I didn’t appreciate growing up and I really miss good hacking. But knowing that several pairs of eyes would have noticed something wrong in a field or that there’s always someone willing to look after them while you’re on holiday is definitely a bonus.

I feel like I say this every month….but, I’m so proud of Roo. We went home to Wales over the weekend and I took Roo to do a fairly challenging 16km and he aced it.

Just to give an idea of the kind of hacking I like to do in winter. It’s more technical and slow, here are a few of my stats from the ride.

• Walk average speed: 4.6kph
• Trot average speed: 12kph
• Canter average speed: 18.3kph
• Walk time: 1hr 25mins
• Trot time: 38mins
• Canter time: 31s
• Elevation: 290m
• Gates: 15

For me winter is all about building skills so long slow work over challenging technical terrain is my favourite type of work. Roo really struggles with this kind of thing, he’s not quite strong or co-ordinated enough and his fitness isn’t quite there yet. But he never gives up! Some of the hills were long trot sections and not once did he ask to walk. By the end of the downhills he had really improved just in that one ride.

There’s something about hacking in the Welsh hills that gives me a peace no where else can. You don’t see a soul, just surrounded by views and open countryside. I love just pootling around with my horse, I think it really builds up our bond and there’s something so much more relaxing training on this sort of terrain compared to the easier faster training of the summer.

I wanted to take Tissy’s new Flex boots for a good test so we went out to the local woods that has deep sticky mud, hard gravel track, slippy mud, falling leaves, water to cross and grass to canter along.

Plus to make it extra fun Dan came on his bike, Tissy absolutely loves chasing him down and gets a bit carried away with her angry giraffe impression when she’s not in front. Regardless of her not so good behaviour (you’d think she’d know better by now), Tissy never fails to put a smile on my face.

The boots stayed put too. I’m recording every kilometre I ride in them so hopefully I’ll be able to give a good review in a years time. Tissy seemed pretty comfortable and I would say that although the tinniest bit slightly slippier than shoes on slick mud/leaves overall I didn’t really notice a difference.