July 31, 2013

So far the whole trip has been awesome, but today was freaking fantastic. We gave the ponies the day off and spent our day at the New Forest Show.

It is a huge show with two main arenas and several smaller ones, tons of attractions, vendors, exhibits and entertainment.

We split into groups for looking around but met back up to watch some of the performances. The first performance we all caught was a pony club games demo competition. They ran through about 10 races, and we cheered for West Hants because that is the MGAGB we are a part of.

The competition was exciting, and the riders showed a high level of skill. They were all vaulting on and off their ponies and rolling through their races with speed. We were excited to see Grooms Steaks Race, known as Run and Lead in IMGA. We also like their rendition of 3 Leg Race which involves the sack being handed over with both riders mounted. We all agreed this looked safer than the way we do it. The other difference we noticed is that they spelled “pony prep” instead of “pony club” in the Pony Club race.

Later we watched jumping and marveled at the height of the jumps. Then we caught another session of Pony Club games. We were interested to see they finished pyramid race (very similar to association race) with the 4th rider placing a crown on top of the stack instead of a carton.

They finished the session with Big Sack and I think we were all glad we do not do that race.

The final session we all watched was the Devil’s Horsemen, which included a comical chariot race.

The rest of the day was full of tasting food, shopping, checking out exhibits and marveling at everything.

Have I mentioned that just about everywhere we have been is dog friendly? Well it is. And boy am I missing my Daisy Dog. There were tons of vendor booths with neat things for dogs today.

And here is a commentary by Leah:

First we breathed royal air today. Prince Edward was enjoy the show and walked right past us. Too cool.

We also saw the ferret races, which were hysterical. They ran through theses tubes and through obstacles in the tubes. There were even people betting on it.

The terrier races started off with a serious race and then followed that up by allowing anyone in the crowd with a terrier with them to bring their dog to give it a try. It was hilarious. One dog even stopped to poop during the race.

Next we went to the food area and enjoyed trying all of the free samples of English food. And then we explored the animal exhibits which included birds, rabbits and rodents. It was crazy.

And now commentary from Annie:

We were on our way out of the grounds and host Megan pointed out a ride that looked like fun so we all piled onto the ride. It was a tight squeeze and it started off casual, spinning in the air and then it started to jerk up and down and speed up. Everyone was screaming and having a good time. It was wicked awesome.

And now commentary by Sammi:

We were walking around and I saw some neat tents like a blacksmith tent and I was like “ooo” and we checked them out. One of them was old time farming stations that they were making apple juice by hand. They loaded buckets full of apples I o this machine and then apple juice came out. It smelled really good like apples so I bought a bottle. We tried it later and it was really really good.

Back to Krista:

The team has a clinic with Collin Carson in the morning. Which is great.

I am not sure how much, if any, Internet we will have Friday-Sunday while we are at Welsh Champs. So you might have standby for the blogs for those days.