I can’t believe summer just up and left, I didn’t really get the summer I hoped for but we still had lots of fun at the more local rides. I have definitely spent less time at the yard and as a result the absolute filthy chaos I made for myself to tidy is entirely my own doing. However, I do love a good clean and tidy to kick off a fresh start and what better time for a fresh start than going into a new season.

Note to self: Autumn clean would be much easier if I had done a Spring clean. But at least now the stables are ready for when the clocks change and we go back to being stabled.

A big thank you to the Derbyshire group, the ride organisers and the Ashover family for a lovely teatime spent with Tissy! Firstly the venue was lovely, you can go pick flowers and in autumn it turns into a pumpkin patch! It’s quite novel going to an organised ride at 3pm rather than 9am but I actually really liked it.

The route was another technical course and we thoroughly enjoyed the hills, roots, rocks and little quaint villages. This kind of terrain suits Tissy, she’s such a mountain goat, but even more so now where I’d like her to go a little slower, the terrain does that for me instead of it being an ongoing negotiation!

Once we finished the route we got an ice cream and drink courtesy of Ashover farm, which was a wonderful end to our day before heading back home. Derbyshire group definitely have some of the best bonus features to their social rides!

This is such a lovely ride, easy to get to, great big lovely venue, amazing route and always a good vibe. I hadn’t really paid much attention to the new Team Spirit class, but as soon as I saw it in action I knew I wanted to have a go next time! It is a 140km relay race for teams of 4. Two of the combinations ride 40km as a pair and then hand the imaginary baton over to the second pair, who ride 30km. It’s still a normal graded ride but with a mass start and the feel of a race as the time is still ticking until you vet. It looked like so much fun and something that could be a real showstopper event for all levels as you can be a Novice, Open or Advanced rider in the teams.

But for this year Tissy and I headed out on the 25km pleasure ride. Having got stung for going over the 12kph max speed once already this year I planned to throw in plenty of walk sections to bring out overall speed down. We ended up doing 47minutes of walk over about 7 different sections, a total of 4km, 1hr 25mins of trot over 20.9km and 3mins canter which gave me a speed of 11.3kph on my GPS but my vet sheet speed was just under 11kph.

We had a great time and some lovely company too! Tissy never ceases to bring the sass and astounded me with a HR of 39 at the end! It’s so wonderful to still be able to enjoy taking her out and about and I’m so grateful to be able to give her little adventures still. She just loves her job!

After Estrid did her 40km at Long Mynd I was feeling pretty confident that we might get to go to Thetford to do our first ever race and FEI event. She breezed around the course and looked great at the end but the following days she was showing signs of general stiffness. She also then managed to cut herself in the field…nicking a small artery which dramatically pulsated blood around for a bit, she must have done it just as I was walking down to give them breakfast. It didn’t seem like a big deal as it clotted quickly and it was a small wound but the next day there was a little bit of swelling.

Now I don’t know if she’d thrown some shapes and coincidentally cut herself and aggravated the injury from when she bolted through the fences or whether while she was doing whatever she was doing to cut herself she’s tweaked something new but she wasn’t looking great the next day.

We still put her race shoes on on the Friday and I had 3 days before the closing date of entries to make my decision. But the more I thought about it the more it just didn’t make sense to go. I’m in no rush, I have no goal of a 2027 Championship qualification, I don’t even have a long term goal at this point, there’s plenty more years to come and there’s only one Estrid, so I decided to give her the rest of the summer off, as my schedule doesn’t allow me to aim for any of the later races on the EGB calendar this year, and hopefully work towards doing our first race next year.

It hurts, putting so much time, effort, money and emotion into a dream, a goal, a single event for it not to happen, it really sucks. But you know what would suck more, doing something that I wasn’t 100% confident in and it backfiring with potential long-term consequences.

So with no competitions for us to aim for it seemed like now would be a good time for Estrid to have a break, for me to have a break, and then we can have a fun autumn going on some adventures and not think about ‘training’ but just go out and have some fun, before trying again next year.

Tissy and I had a great time at the Barbrook social ride! It’s such a varied and technical course with stunning views and changing scenery. I opted to do the 32km but then shortened it to 26km by not doing the 6km farm ride at the end. I just decided that as much as she would have enjoyed it, that Tissy would have wanted to canter the lovely grassy fields and she’d done enough for the day.

It’s the first time she’s actually wanted to walk while out and about rather than go a million miles an hour and I see that as a sign for us to slow down and take it a bit easier. Don’t get me wrong she had her ears pricked and wanted to trot and canter everywhere, but when I asked her to walk she actually happily walked on a loose rein.

She looked really good at the end, if I do say so myself, and I’m excited for her to have a couple more adventures before the summer is over.

This ride had an added bonus to the excellent route, a complimentary sausage bap, or sausage cob if you’re from Derbyshire. It was a really lovely cherry on the cake before we made the journey back home.

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!