I wanted a good ride to test Estrid following her accident, before I went ahead and made any decisions with regards to the rest of the season. I have always wanted to try the Long Mynd ride and it was the perfect timing for a run out for us.

It was spectacular! It got me in the feels right from the start. I’m originally from Mid Wales and the landscape reminded me of home, spending hours in the mountains with Tissy, without a care in the world or a time I had to be back for.

This ride had hills, technical ground, bouncy grassy canter stretches, steep climbs, incredible views, wild ponies and plenty of familiar endurance family faces. It also had some stony tracks, a bit of road work and a fair amount of gates but it is 100% worth it and definitely doesn’t detract from the overall experience.

I don’t think I’ll ever not be relieved to pass the initial vetting heart rate with Estrid, she was wired! Which is actually pretty nice that she knew where she was and was excited to get out. She was tanking over the first 20km, which does make me question what she’ll be like in a mass start, as soon as she has eyes on a horse ahead she’s like a homing missile and it takes some considerable convincing to not speed off at full pelt.

The second 20km she settled into a good rhythm and I got to really enjoy the experience and take in the views. We rode mostly alone but also did some stretches with others and it was so nice that she actually managed to go side by side and overtake without planting her feet.

I was really happy with how she felt, our speed and her general behaviour. Her boot rubbed her leg really badly and I felt so guilty but hopefully it won’t cause her any problems going forward and I’ll certainly not be using those boots again. Although she absolutely aced the hilly terrain and there’s no question about her fitness and strength there’s still something I’m not 100% sure about as to what to do next. So we’ll see what the next week brings and hopefully make a decision once she’s seen the Physio.

Everyone touch some wood but Estrid is doing well coming back into training at the moment. More or less starting where we left off, 6 weeks off isn’t the end of the world for horse fitness and Estrid certainly hasn’t lost much at all. So we’re focusing on improving her core and muscle tone, as this is where she definitely regressed during her injury recovery.

At the moment 4 training sessions a week is working well for my horse-life balance and for Estrid. For this week I had one pole session, one water treadmill session and two ridden work.

Estrid has found both her 80km rides pretty easy physically so I have no doubt about her capability to up the distance. It’s not the perfect prep that I would have liked but there is a part of me that thinks f**k it, you might as well enter while your horse is sound and see what happens, then another part of my brain says ‘there’s no rush, no need, wait until the prep is perfect’. I can see reason in both and doing or not doing 100km will not be to the detriment of my horse.

There are so many factors to consider, cost, prep, timing of the farrier etc but at the end of the day I need to remember that it’s meant to be fun, I’m meant to look forward to an event and enjoy the run up. So for now we train, and in a couple of weeks the decision will be made.

I should have gone to Oakover, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t, but my catastrophising brain took over and we bailed last minute. It’s not often that I ever let myself back out of anything, I don’t naturally have much oomph to get going on things but once I’m doing anything then I tend to enjoy it and see it finished, so I’m quite strict with myself about just starting or going to anything.

But when I woke up to torrential rain that continued for 3 hours with my weather app saying it would last another 3 hours with lightning to boot, I started to worry that my van, which is 2 wheel drive, wouldn’t be able to get off the venue field. I had an internal war of ‘6hrs of rain = very slippy top grass’ logic Vs ‘it’s been dry for weeks, it’ll be fine’ logic and the catastrophising brain won.

Turns out it stopped raining at 9am, there was no lightning and everyone who went had a wonderful time. I was left kicking myself for the rest of the day. We still went out in the trailer and got the same distance but Oakover is one of my favourites and I’m so sad to have missed it for no reason, and feel guilty for having a spot that someone else could have taken.

There we go, we live and learn, I will now use this for any future brain farts, and just remind myself of the feeling of missing Oakover to get my butt out the door.

It seems that what I want to do on my birthday hasn’t changed since about the age of 2…I was yet to become a teenager when I first rode Tissy on a birthday and two decades later nothing has changed.

What better way to have a chilled out day than ride your pony, go for ice cream and eat birthday cake on a nice walk!

I feel like I had such good momentum going into this season, I was in a nice routine, I felt motivated and excited. Then as ever with horses, the curveball of Estrid’s run in with a fence threw a spanner in the works. Estrid has had 6 weeks off and now we only have 6 weeks to prepare for Thetford, the only FEI ride left for the 2025 season in the UK, and I don’t know if we’re going to make it.

One thing I actually like about myself is that when motivation is lacking I am very disciplined, so although I don’t feel like pulling myself together and getting back into a training routine, I’ll still do it anyway. The reason I hesitate to aim for a 1* this season is that it’s a lot of time, effort and money to spend if I’m not 100% happy with the preparation.

I’m thinking of doing a national 80km CER instead but then a little bit of me thinks ‘I might as well do the extra 20km and do a 1*’. I guess we shall see how the next few weeks go and make the decision closer to the closing date of the ride. For now I’m going to fake it ’till I make it and hope that I get my mojo back!

The whole process of entering an FEI ride can be a bit daunting so I thought I’d go through what I had to enter Estrid and I to our first FEI ride (even if we didn’t get to go this time).

First of all we’ve completed our Novice FEI qualifications which are two rides of 40-79km and two rides of 80-100km at under 16kph. The first ride must not be less than 1 year and 6 months before the first 1* and all four rides must be done within a 3 year period. You don’t have to be registered with the FEI to do these, they are normal EGB national rides.

Next up we had to register with the FEI. This can be done by going to the FEI services page on the EGB website and selecting FEI horse registration and FEI rider registration. You then pay £50 to register and upload all the relevant passport pages.

At this stage if you are competing on home soil you don’t need an FEI passport until you’re up to 3* level. Once you’ve paid for FEI registration EGB will send off your Novice qualifications for verification and you’ll get your FEI ID number which allows you access to the FEI horse app.

For entering FEI rides in the UK you just use the EGB events page and enter as you normally would. My entry fee for my 1* was £215, the reason for the increase in price from national to FEI is under FEI rules the ride organiser needs more officials to run the ride, such as FEI qualified vets, and foreign officials so you’re paying for the increased running costs of the event.

The other thing that is slightly different about entering an FEI ride is in the week before you have to record AM and PM temperatures for your horse, this is for bio-security and to ensure no one brings an unwell horse to an event. When you arrive at the venue a Vet will check the temperatures, scan the microchip of your horse and check the passport.

In terms of the actual ride and vetting it is run very much the same as national events and if you’ve completed your four national rides you’ll know the drill! It’s well worth downloading the FEI rule app and making sure you understand the rules before jumping into FEI, it seems a bit daunting at first but I make my own notes about the bits relevant to me and it helps me understand them.

Estrid was very lucky to win a ‘Spa day’ at Saywell Equestrian when she won the Performance formula at Haywood Oaks back in March. After her injury it seemed like the perfect time to use our prize.

The yard was super friendly and such a nice set up. We started off in the Equusir best box, followed by the magnetic field blanket and then the Salt therapy room. Each treatment was 20minutes and although Estrid was having one of her morse stressy days and didn’t really seem to appreciate it, it was still super interesting to see all the elements.

Here’s the report that the Equusir best box collated about Estrid:

Unfortunately 6 days after the high of Windsor, after looking so great despite the tough course, Estrid decided to deliver a low, and bolt through a post and rail fence and an electrical wire fence sustaining multiple injuries. Just 2 weeks out from our planned first FEI 1* event, so onto Plan B it is!

When I say there were so many opportunities for this ride to go wrong for us I really do mean a comedic series of events that felt like it just wasn’t meant to be…but we kept trusting in our preparation, the process and Estrid. She just kept pulling it out the bag and quite honestly I just can’t believe my luck.

First of all I’d like to thank our Physio, Priestwood Physiotherapy and our Farrier Ben Wyles, alongside Legacy Equine rehabilitation and Reactor Panel Saddles who helped us prepare for the event with expert care, advice and training. Estrid’s performance and resilience has been excellent so far this season and it certainly helps to have a superb team around us.

Hurdle number one at 4:30am on the morning of our ride: Road closures, followed by traffic jams. Were we even going to get to the venue in time? We got there 30mins before our vet time, not the casual mooch around the venue and relaxing start to the day I had planned. But we deployed Mum to the briefing, Dad to get the bibs and Tom the treatment vet checked us in super quick so Dan could take Estrid for a leg stretch and grass munch.

Hurdle number two: Estrid was hyped, we knew she would be and keeping her heart rate low was always going to be a challenge but we didn’t quite anticipate the leading group of 160km riders coming into the vet gate at the same time as our initial vetting. Despite the excitement Estrid passed with a HR of 58bpm. I was so proud and so excited to get the opportunity to tack up and ride around Windsor great park!

She was keen out on that first loop, she is naturally quite fast but she was really wanting to go for it, most the time it’s safer to let her travel than try to hold her back, she is more than capable of speeds above 16kph and she wasn’t puffing so I let her get on with it, knowing that our presentation times were never going to be great so would bring our average speed down and hopefully ensure we remained under 16kph for our FEI qualification.

Hurdle number three: Estrid tripped and went sprawling! She kept spooking at trees…and let me tell you there are quite a few trees in a PARK! She spooked, slipped on the dewy short grass, slid around like Bambi, managed to tuck a front leg underneath her and slide on her knee, while her back legs almost overtook the front…miraculously I stayed on and she recovered back onto her feet. I really thought that that might be it for us, but she had no tenderness and was completely sound, so we carried on, while my paranoid brain was constantly scanning for the smallest sign of discomfort.

We made it through the first 40km and into our first vet gate. This is where we made our biggest mistakes of the day, we got excited that she was allowing us to pour water on her, we overcooled her and then failed to acknowledge it, and didn’t put a rug on her while we waited in the que for vetting, I thought her shivering was excitement/anxiety, none of the other horses had rugs on, but she really was just cold. Her heart rate was 74 and even her little nose was quivering with cold. I felt like such an idiot. We didn’t have time to do anything else other than rug her up and re-present immediately and hope, as we timed into the vet at 19:59, just one second to spare. Partially not our fault due to the long vet que but, the long que should really have been a blessing, allowing her heart rate to drop more than we needed had she been looked after properly. Instead we turned it against ourselves. Luckily the second presentation was fine and we were all set to head out on loop 2.

I was so proud of her heading out of the venue with ears pricked ready to tackle another 20km. We had a mix of riding with others and being alone but she did the majority out in front and passed other horses with minimal drama. She is still hesitant to go past and she always drags her heels a little if she feels the horse isn’t coming too but she’s improved so much!

The second vet gate went without another major mess up by the humans, we immediately put a rug on her bum and after a few buckets of water just waited for he heart rate to drop. A not too shabby presentation of 5mins and we were through to the final loop. Estrid’s heart rate was always lower in the hold than in the vetting, you could see her tension go up and she left the other horses and was stood in the shade of the vetting tent, but there’s nothing we can do other than give her more experience in these situations and build our bond so that she can take comfort in her humans. She ate and drank like a pro and happily wandered around the vet gate trying to visit everyone else’s hay station but her own.

Hurdle number four: I need to thoroughly check my tack before getting on. I feel so bad about this mistake as it could have been so uncomfortable for Estrid. My saddles panels are velcroed in place. Mum changes the numnahs when I’m in the vetting, as she’d swapped over to the fresh ones for the final loop the panel had come loose and moved over towards the centre, I didn’t notice until I took the saddle off later, but Estrid essentially had done the last 20km with the panel in the wrong place. I am so grateful that this silly mistake didn’t cause her any pain, her back felt completely fine at the end and the next day, but I still feel so guilty for not noticing.

The last loop feeling is always incredible, Estrid cantered out the venue like she’d been doing this all her life. I even shed a tear of happiness and appreciation for her tough little spirit. So many combinations had been vetted out through the day and I was so aware of how hard the ground was and how baking the sun felt.

Hurdle number five: Barely 2 km from the venue Estrid and I had a disagreement about line choice, meaning we trotted straight into a boulder and tripped over the top of it…for that split second I felt all the emotions but she picked herself up and resumed on her merry way as if nothing happened, could I be so lucky to have gotten away with another trip?

Her recorded loop speeds were 13.7, 14.9 and 15.7kph, never once did I have to ask her to kick on, I spent most my time slowing her down. Our final speed across the finish line was 14.6kph, we had kept under the 16kph threshold to gain our FEI qualification, all we had to do now was pass the vet.

I barely put any water on her, wary of our earlier mishap, so we tipped a total of 4 buckets over her, put a rug on and just let her eat and drink and wander around. Her heart rate was steady and consistently in the 40’s so I was pretty confident heading into vet.

Hurdle number six: Royalty arrived so there was a pretty big crowd next to the vetting and it seemed that most the other horses were back out on course…leaving Estrid pony-friendless and surrounded by noisy, excited humans. Her eyes were out on stalks, she would not stand still and the shivering was back. I so desperately want her to feel confident in these environments and I would never shy away from a situation like this but my heart did sink a little as the vet tried to follow her around with a stethoscope. When he said 62bpm I was astonished, we had made it through by the skin of our teeth, just the trot up to go. Estrid’s trot ups are quite enthusiastic and, if I do say so myself, she looked great!

I think I was a little bit in shock and disbelief at the end of the day, we had done it and she still looked ready to go back out. She spent the next hour whinnying at all the horses leaving on their next loops before we headed home and she looked incredible the next day, not a sore muscle or hot spot to be found. I am so so proud of her, she’s turning out to be quite a tough cookie despite her anxious nature. We have learnt a lot about how to manage her and have had a kick up the butt to up our crew and vet gate game. I just can’t wait to see where she’ll take me next!