My main goal this year was to complete Estrid’s novice FEI qualifications and attempt our first CER, if we got to an actual 1* that would be a bonus. All we needed was another 80km at under 16kph. Looking at the schedule it seemed like I’d have plenty of opportunities but when I compared it against my work schedule that narrowed the field quite considerably.

I’m in no rush with Estrid and we have taken the process very slowly with her, taking 3 years to get to this point but I truly believe she’s physically ready for some racing this year. Mentally we have a long way to go but at this point the only way for her to gain experience, learn and improve is to do it!

So what better way to gain FEI experience than attending a major FEI event, hey! I was so excited to see a national 80km GER on the Windsor schedule, it’s one of the best opportunities in the UK for our horses to experience a ‘Championship like’ atmosphere and it’s always an incredible event to attend.

We had 8 weeks from our first event of the year to the Windsor ride to train and prepare. There are so many things that have to align for it to happen for us but of one thing I’m sure, she’s certainly fit enough to tackle her next 80km.

Tissy is doing very well on her goal of scouting out new rides to try this year. This time we ventured to Creswell for the coloured cob ride, a unique course that the majority of the course is a two way, there and back section. In true Endurance family fashion the ride organiser for this ride at the very last minute wasn’t able to attend but the group pulled together and ran an absolutely seamless event, so thank you to all the organisers, volunteers, helpers and vets for their time so that Tissy and I could have a fun day out.

The route kicked off with an absolutely fabulous section through the Creswell crags, a really nice surprise to start our 16km pleasure ride off with. It just kept on giving with cool little ravines, wooded tracks, lakes and fields.

I’m getting a little bit tired of discussing Tissy’s need for speed and eternal enthusiasm with her but I wouldn’t have her any other way. I think we would be better off entering social rides rather than pleasure rides so that we didn’t have a max speed to stick to, as it takes Tissy a great deal of restraint and walking to stay under 12kph. However, a lot of our wish list rides are Pleasure rides so we will have to continue the negotiations if she want’s to check out more new pony parties.

I ventured out to a Sport Endurance social ride where they had a loop of 12miles but had said that if you set off early you could go around twice. This was perfect for us, I wasn’t going to be able to get to any more rides where Estrid could get used to a venue atmosphere with my work schedule so we treated this like a graded ride and planned to do 40km with a little crew/vet gate stop between our loops.

The venue, route, marking and general atmosphere was lovely! Lots of great grassy stretches, a couple of small hills, plenty of suburban-ish tracks through a lovely nature reserve.

Estrid flew around, it didn’t even feel like 40km. The sun was shining and we had a great time. She’s still funny about passing other horses, she doesn’t want to stay with them but she loses her nerve just before her nose overtakes and backs off , and she was an absolute fruit loop at the venue, pacing around and whinnying at anything that moved. But we still had a lovely time and to top it off we got an easter egg with our rosette!

The point where your yard owner says you can transition to the summer paddocks is the point where my heart lifts and horse ownership becomes much more enjoyable for me. It wouldn’t be my personal choice to keep horses stabled but as I’m on a livery there are obviously restrictions to personalising horse care, so when we switch to the summer routine and they can be out 24/7 my heart feels so much happier. I know I’m still extremely lucky to have as much winter turnout on a livery as I do, and I thank my lucky stars that I have so much freedom to care for my horses as I want to.

I actually quite like the routine of stabled horses, I like mucking out and tucking them up, they’re cleaner, it’s quicker, but I much prefer them to be moving, breathing in fresh air and it’s nice to spend time with them in the field while I poo pick.

The added bonus of not feeling like I have to wake up super early or rush back from work so they have maximum turnout time is much appreciated as well as the lower costs of them being cared for if we’re away. It’s definitely the start of summer fun in my head, when the grass starts growing and the nights are light!

Never a more appropriate time to say; ‘the day wasn’t as bad as it looks on paper’. Tissy and I had an absolute blast at the Pikehall endurance ride despite being eliminated for going too fast…or maybe because of going too fast.

Now I do not condone the blatant flaunting of rules set to protect our horses, there is a 12kph maximum speed limit on pleasure rides for a reason and it should be adhered to. As a fairly experienced endurance rider I should have known better but I didn’t wear a watch and I was looking at my equilab average speed rather than my ride time. My equilab says we we’re just under 12kph but the distance did come up a few km’s shorter on my phone so it turns out that we did 13.5kph and were eliminated.

Minor speed issues aside, we started the day by picking up Izzy and Fluffy to get the two grey old timers out to a pony party and Pikehall delivered. Glorious weather, great tracks over stunning scenery and two very exuberant ponies with two care free riders. Topped off with lovely compliments on Tissy’s condition from the vets and an excellent bacon butty to finish! What more could you want from a day out.

In all honesty Estrid is 80km fit already and she physically could have done an 80km at Haywood oaks. I would have had doubt in my mind about how she would have mentally coped with the ride atmosphere with it being her first outing of the season. As a rule I never do anything if there’s an ounce of doubt so I opted for a practice run at Haywood Oaks and a later 80km. This does mean that our opportunities to do an FEI 1* become a lot tighter but I’m in no rush, and thanks to some amazing people taking on ride organisation we have two opportunities, one in June and one in August.

I am still very much undecided about the road ahead in terms of FEI qualifications. If money and time were no object then I would love to compete at a Championship again, but I know the stress of putting all your eggs on one horse to be at it’s peak for one day a year all too well. I know the time, sacrifice, funds and dedication it takes. I’m not sure I want to do it even if I could afford to.

For now we’re aiming for one 1* and we’ll go from there. No expectations, no long term goals, just one step at a time. Our next training block is focusing more on distance and less on strength. So we started off with a nice 25km around Foremark reservoir. For the first 6 weeks, speed doesn’t matter in the slightest, it’s hours in the saddle and miles covered.

We’ll now have two ‘longer’ training sessions a week, we still have a few weeks left of our treadmill block and once that’s complete we’ll swap that for a faster 10-15km session once a week and keep one schooling/pole work session.

In my quest to give Tissy the retirement she deserves I have been researching new places to ride within an hour of the yard. Tissy finds hacking at home boring, she loves a new place to explore and really comes alive when she has fresh pastures to conquer! She still endures the odd hack out at home, I tell her she needs to do some boring fitness work so that she can go to pony parties, in reality she doesn’t need much work to happily bimble around a 16km, but still, a bit of preparation makes me feel better.

I’m aiming for one outing a month between March & November, so if anyone has any suggestions then please send them my way, we live near Uttoxeter so our access to the A50, M6, M1 & M42 are pretty good!

This time we headed to Acton Hall Equestrian centre for their Park & Ride. It’s £5 per horse, you’re paying for the parking facilities rather than the ride. The route is all on public land through some lovely woods with a mix of sandy tracks and fire road. When you book on you get a talk around and a little map but it’s fairly straight forward to get to the woods and have an explore.

We did about 10km but you could easily add on more tracks and loops to up the distance. Tissy wasn’t the epitome of a well behaved experienced endurance pony…she wanted to explore at full speed and was very cross about the restrictions placed upon her by her (in her opinion) overly cautious rider!

Nevertheless, we both had a lovely time and it’s definitely an option to come back for training in the future.

Estrid is not a horse you can throw in the deep end, she needs practice and routine and patience to thrive. So as tempting as it was to make our first ride an 80km to get that FEI qualification, so we could do a 1* at Windsor, I knew in my heart and head that it wouldn’t be right for her, especially as my work schedule has meant we’ve not even been out to a social ride yet.

I entered the 49km class so that we’d have some vet gate practice and plenty of time to get back into the swing of things. It was so nice to not worry about whether we’d have a low enough heart rate to even pass the initial vetting as Estrid was quite relaxed for her.

In all honesty I didn’t have much say on the pace for the first 23km…if I asked for slower she would get so silly that she was either going to pull a muscle or trip so I did my best to balance her, choose a good line and keep a nice rhythm. We ended up doing the first 32km loop at 15kph, a bit faster than I’d wanted.

In the vet gate she point blank refused to be sloshed down without throwing a hissy fit so we just had to untack and wait. We still managed a respectable presentation time and she vetted beautifully despite being the only horse up at the vetting. She still refused to have the sweat and grit washed off her in the hold and took Dan for a stomp around the venue rather than chill and eat. Tissy also never relaxed for the first vet gate so this doesn’t worry me, Estrid was obviously feeling fresh and excited to be on the move.

The second loop she was much more manageable, so we set a pace of 13kph, she’s still not great at riding with other horses so we did most the ride by ourselves with little sections with others, it’s something I’d like to change as I think she’d actually really enjoy running with a group once she got used to it. Saying that she was a bit sad when the horses we’d just joined split off on another route and lost a bit of the spring in her step.

She drank really well and grudgingly accepted sloshes out on course, at the final vetting had it been a vet gate we could have gone in on 4 minutes, which I was really pleased about. We waited a little longer until her heart rate was in the low 50’s just to make sure and she gave her final trot up the same enthusiasm as her first.

I had a really lovely day, with Dan crewing and Estrid clearly enjoying being out on course. It was nice to see the familiar faces of the endurance family and be back out and about. Haywood oaks was so well organised, from the super professional rider packs to the marking, the route was wonderful to ride, but to really top it off the prize giving and prizes were amazing!

The cherry on an already fantastic cake was Estrid winning her class! We had a lovely cupcake, some gloves, a headcollar from Old Mill animal feeds and a Spa day voucher from Saywell equestrian rehab centre, a Haywood oaks keyring and a certificate! Thank you so so much to the organisers, sponsors and their arm of helpers who made the event possible, it is truly appreciated. What a great start to our 2025 season!

Our training hasn’t been ideal leading up to our first competition, with weather and work, but we have made the most of the time we have had and kept as consistent as we could.

Estrid has had 32 training sessions in the last 12 weeks leading up to Haywood Oaks.

• 5 hill walks
• 9 Polework (ridden and in-hand)
• 9 Hacks (including two on gallops)
• 3 Schooling
• 6 Water treadmill

I aim for 4 sessions a week. Mondays are usually poles, hill walks or schooling. Wednesday has been our water treadmill day. Friday and Sunday are our hacking days. Which meant more often than not she was only being ridden twice a week and worked from the ground on the other days.

She is actually starting to look pretty good so maybe this method really suits her, but as we prepare for our next 80km she will have more ridden work and less groundwork. I’m still going to keep to 4 sessions a week as life and work are pretty manic at the moment and 4 sessions seems doable to keep everything in balance.

Packing for our first ride of the season seems to have come around so quickly now we’re actually here, but in reality it’s been 3 months of preparation so let’s hope we make it and we have a good time!

I have only ever used a water treadmill for rehab purposes in the past, both in my human work as a Physio and for my horses. Whenever I’ve wanted a horse treadmilling I have sent them to Readwood rehabilitation near Burnley, for 2-6 weeks. They do an absolutely amazing job but at 2.5hrs away from me it wasn’t really an option for using the water treadmill for strength training as part of my pre-season programme for Estrid.

Lucky for me Legacy Equine rehabilitation are only a 15minute drive from our yard and a lovely friend had also got me some vouchers, so I reached out to them to book 12 weeks of water treadmilling from January as part of our pre-season training.

I decided to add it in this year as Estrid is very mobile through her spine and she needs more strength & stability, it’s tricky in winter to get some decent training in due to the weather and daylight so this was a great way of getting consistent, good quality training no matter what the weather.

I have really enjoyed watching Estrid change the way she moves, her posture and fitness over the last few weeks, and I would really like to continue using it as part of her training. I will 100% book 12 weeks for pre-season next year but I’m not sure how to use it going forward, realistically I can’t afford weekly sessions all season, so I will have to do some research on what kind of frequency is needed for any improvement/results but definitely a welcome addition to our training toolbox.