The social media algorithm hit me hard over the last few months as I’ve seen so many beautiful hiviz biothane bridles from Pioneer Endurance going up on the website and off to new homes.

I then saw that the hiviz comes in white, opening up the opportunity for navy and white tack (My fave colour scheme) so I popped a winter training hiviz bridle and breastplate on my wishlist. Zoe made me the most beautiful bridle and I can’t thank her enough as I absolutely love it. Christmas pennies will definitely be saved to add a breastplate!

It’s such a good addition to my hiviz and safety as we head into winter and the real pre-season training begins!

In my head I break down my horsey life into three distinct phases. Pre-season winter; where there’s no competitions but I’m actively training the horses and focusing on fitness. In-Season; where we’re training and competing, and then Off-season winter; Where I’m riding for fun occasionally but mainly just giving the horses a break.

I am firmly in our off-season phase, the horses shoes are off. I ride, maybe, once a week, maybe not at all. In this phase they are stabled at night (in pre-season they’re stabled in the day) and out in the day and they take up about 1.5 – 3hrs of my time a day, which is basically the least amount of input they require year round.

I get to the yard just after 6am and turn them straight out in the field. We’re still lucky enough to not need much haylage out in the field as there’s still a fair amount of grass left but the mud is starting to turn up uninvited! I then muck out both stables, which are on a mix of equinola chopped straw and straw pellets. Then I prep the mash feeds for later and head on home to get ready for work.

I work 8-4 and have a 30minute commute to work. I then go straight to the yard from work, pull the beds down, fill the haynets, make the feeds and bring the ponies in. So pretty low maintenance really!

With weather cancelling Tissy’s last opportunity to go to a pony party this year I had been looking for alternatives so she could still have a fun outing. Somerford is just over an hour drive from me and I’d heard good things about their farm ride, with hardstanding parking and plenty of groomed track I thought it would be a great option for Tissy to get out and explore somewhere new.

I am so glad we made the effort to go, when it would have been so easy to go somewhere closer, cheaper, easier etc. Tissy had the best time and the track was amazing. I’m definitely going to come back for some training with Estrid next season. It’s undulating, twisty and turny in places, plenty of good canter sections and great underfoot. So perfect endurance training.

Although I have had a stable the last few years to accommodate for Tissy’s need for mash as a haylage replacement. I haven’t had to have her in and I’ve had other horses on full grass livery, so it’s been very flexible.

This year as part of the livery changes and in an effort to preserve the fields both my horses will be stabled daily for half the day. Now I still have lots of flexibility in terms of timing, it can be overnight, in the day and there are no set hours or timings.

This means I do have a new stable, so it was time to get everything prepped and ready for the switch to the winter routine. I’m actually quite excited in terms of the routine of it, a little apprehensive about the horse management side, ideally I would love to have my horses somewhere they can choose, in a field with others and a big barn/field shelter with ad lib forage and access as they wish. This is how our horses were kept at home when I was growing up and it’s how I believe we can keep them happiest. However, when you don’t have your own land it’s just not practical and there are many situations where it’s not possible. So fingers crossed Estrid settles into stabled life fairly quickly and we make it through the winter happy and healthy!

Dan and I got married in October. It was the happiest day of Tissy’s life as she feels she is now guaranteed butt scratches and extra treats for life from Dan. I was pretty pleased too.

I wanted to make this video for myself, to look back on, but also as a reminder to Dan of how much he means to me and how grateful I am for all his support in absolutely everything but particularly how he has fully embraced being a horsey girl husband from the very start.

Now the tack room has had a spruce up it was time to put my stuff back in. I was determined that I would only put the essentials that were used day to day back and anything else could go back in storage or sold/donated. My storage is in a loft up a pull down ladder so it’s not easy access. I’m the kind of person that if there are too many barriers in the way it get’s put to the side to ‘do it later’ until I have a pile of dusty rugs that should have gone back in the box 3 weeks ago…

I want to feel streamlined in the kit that I have but I also don’t want to get rid of decent stuff that may one day come in useful and would cost me a fortune to re-acquire. So I came up with a little rule system for myself: Is it used at least once a week? Yes, in the tack room. No: Is it seasonal? Yes, into storage. No: Will it cost more than £50 to re-purchase if needed. Yes, into storage. No: Sell or donate.

I’m quite pleased with what made it back into the tack room but I definitely need to do a savage sort out of what’s in storage. Sounds like a spring, future Beth job to me!

I love a good organise, clean out and spruce up. When the livery I’m on decided to downsize and as the saddle racks in the tack room freed up one by one the tack room started to look a little sad. So those of us remaining decided it was the perfect opportunity to give it a make over.

It got a lick of paint, the addition of some little windows, a new hardware layout and some bird proofing to hopefully stop quite so much bird poop covering all our stuff when they migrate back to the UK next year.

I’m a nerd and I love a good stat. I love to track training, expenditure, anything and everything really. I was curious as to how much extra competing added to the cost of my horses. I’m not taking into account the ‘usual’ costs such as livery, feed, Physio, Farrier, Vaccinations, Dentist etc. but just the competition specific costs.

First off EGB Membership for the year cost me £77

I then spent £466 on entry fees. That was for 3 GER’s I attended, one I never made it to and 6 pleasure or social rides. The costs ranged from £20 to £77 and two of those entries also included camping and corralling in the fee.

Training fees for riding out and about cost me £178. One subscription for an all you can ride season pass on a 4km grass field ride near our yard and 5 one off venues such as gallops, farm rides and lessons.

Fuel was my far my biggest expenditure and the trickiest to work out accurately, but I spent £802 to get to training, events and for the crew car.

Competition food for the humans cost £100. I haven’t worked out the extra horse feed but maybe something to geek out over next year.

I then spent £91 on competition photos over 5 separate orders.

Lastly I had the additional cost of padding and pinning our shoes for two shoeing cycles which added an extra £200 to our usual farrier fees.

In total my 2024 endurance season cost me £1,895. I think a rather reasonable sum considering the time spent riding and the fun we’ve had. It surely must be the best value for money equestrian sport in terms of cost per minute riding right?

Scropton RDA are raising funds to buy a new horse for their riding centre and as such had advertised a pole work clinic with the proceeds going towards the new pony fund. I seized the opportunity to get Estrid out and about doing something different. I especially don’t want her to think everytime we go in the trailer it’s for long training sessions or long endurance competitions.

Our goal this autumn is to work on our canter so that we can enter a clear round jumping competition. It needs a lot of work from our transition to our rhythm. My positioning is especially poor in canter as I’m so used to standing in the stirrups I really struggle with sitting canter and staying nice and sat up.

Overall Estrid made some excellent progress, her trot has really improved this year and I left with lots of ideas of how to improve our canter transitions and to work on altering our pace and stride length. I love having an objective over winter as it keeps my motivation high.

The time is upon us for the switch up of routine and preparing for Winter. We have summer and winter fields so I always check the fence line, tidy up any hedges and trees before moving the horses to a new field. This year will be our first year since we’ve been on livery that we’re in a different winter field, which is very exciting.

Although technically it is further away from the barn for haynets, turnout and feeding I won’t have to carry anything up muddy slippy hills as it’s more or less flat and on hard standing all the way to the hay feeders.

There is a beautiful new wooden post and rail fence complete with new automatic trough on hard standing which the next door farm put in. My only concern is that Tissy, the wood muncher, may chew it but it’s going to have a run of electric along the top and it’s creosoted so hopefully she thinks better of it, otherwise I’m going to have to fence off the fencing!

The best bit about moving fields is watching the horses have their first run around, explore and get straight onto munching fresh grass!