August 10, 2013

There are three heats of open this weekend and we were in heat two of the first session of 8 races. It was a rough session for us. Collectively the team rode rather slow and there were too many mistakes.

It was not our best showing. We had a little chat, some lunch and spectated a while before session 2.

Speaking of lunch, lets talk about the baked potatoes available at the food vendor. I saw Crissy eating one and it started a chain reaction. The potatoes are oven roasted in a big iron style oven. Then it is split into a container with your choice of toppings piled on. I took Crissy’s lead and went for curry and cheese. Megan and Sammy picked chili and cheese.

Did I mention its cold here? Well it is. Like hoodie and jeans during the day. I am liking it, but I did not pack my weekend bag as appropriately for it as I would have liked. Burrrrr.

Session 2 was much better. The team had some speed and the mistakes were a lot less. We had one hand off fumble that landed in the field if play. Sammi expertly picked it up while mounted but Krista forgot to yell to her to recross the A line. Elimination. The trainer takes the fault on that one.

We ended the day feeling much better about the second session.

Colin gave Krista and Sammi a ride to the grocery store to pick up some cash and Krista and Sammi opted to get fancy bread for sandwiches for dinner for everyone.

Mean while Leah and Julia went to the showers. They were a little traumatized to find it was a large open room community shower.

After dinner Colin did a little camp site coaching, which was much appreciated. And then we spent a while goofing off, including a fun round of snapchat led by Jasmine.

It seemed like a really long day already and most if us were pretty much ready to crash. But there was an evening social event complete with DJ. Krista insisted that everyone “make an appearance”. After all, the rider declaration (form) warns against “anti social behavior” which could cause a ban from the northern competitions.

The “disco” started off slow, with 20-30 young riders dominating the dance floor. As the evening wore on the age group shifted and the girls hit the dance floor where they spent most of the remaining night. Mean while Krista socialized with some old friends and some new ones.

It was a really good night and a great social event to cap off the end of the trip.

August 9, 2013

We had an early start today to get the lorry packed and ready to head out to the Cock if the North competition. We had to run over to one field to pick up fencing. Thanks to Colin, who let Krista drive his car, we had that back and were able to pack the feed and ponies quicker.

Mean while Steph and Trevor brought Jack by for us to borrow and gifted Julia and Krista polo shirts! And Juliet picked up haylage. P

We headed out around 11am. Krista and Sammy rode with Jazzy, who drove the horse can and everyone else loaded into the lorry.

We arrived in the afternoon and got the pony paddocks and tents set up. At this competition, like most in MGAGB, there are not stalls so everyone puts up paddocks.

Rob played chef and was kind enough to invite us to a pasta dinner after everything was set up.

We also got to meet out 5th pony, Barley. He is a medium, solid built paint pony. Very quick, but he is also a little new to games, and doesn’t know what vaults are. We decided Leah would ride him in some races.

After some joking around it was finally time for the briefing. 10pm seems very late for us, but its the usual here. We it our heat assignments, done by drawing numbers. From and organizational point of view, I love this method.

Pretty soon it was time to bed. We ride at 10:30 in the morning!

August 8, 2013

Today was beach day. But we started the day with a game of ring toss and then practice. It went pretty well and we were happy to have Colin pop in with a few tips and tricks.

*The rest of today’s blog is guest blogged by The entire team.

The beach was cold at first but Megan was brave, hezahhhhhhh, and led the charge into the water. Most of us followed.

It did not smell salty but it tasted salty. Most of us were dunked by Rob. And it was cold but you went numb pretty fast and then it wasn’t so bad. But none the less we were out and back on the sand before too long.

We sunbathed and napped for a while. It was nice until the wind blew then it was cold. Then we had ice cream. Genius. It was awesome. Ice cream on the beach when you are cold, oh yeah.

On the way home we stopped by a tack store, droll. They had pony sized everything. Krista ran into an old horse friend and they discussed borrowing a 5th pony for the weekend.

There was a whole room for boots and a wall of bits and a dog section and even a chicken section. There was a whole room for blankets and a whole room for clothes. It was heaven.

We picked up Rob’s lorry from the inspection station and krista took over driving the mini bus. Sammi and Megan braved the drive with her. Krista drove great until a bush popped through the window.

We dropped the bus,finished the drive home in the lorry and went out for dinner at Toby’s Carvery. Yummy. We all liked the Yorkshire Pudding. They had gammon, turkey, beef, ham and assorted veggies.

We finished the night with happy birthday and cake for Sophie’s 10th bday. Yum again.

And tomorrow we are on our way to Cock of the North.

August 7, 2013

Today was amazing. We all loaded up into the mini bus, including birthday girl, Sophie, and three of her friends, the other Lockyers, Colin and the MGAA team.

We went to Longleat – safari park and animal adventure. We started in the animal kingdom. We got to walk through areas with anteaters, weird birds, meerkats, red pandas, stingrays, porcupines, otters, tortoises, and more. Then we went through the penguin sanitary, the butterfly house, the bat cave, and tiny monkeys. They had ropes that ran over our heads to play on. And a lot of the animals could walk back and forth through the people path. The meerkats were very active and ran back and forth through our feet.

Then we hoped into a boat and toured the river. There were hippos and sea lions in the water. Megan got to feed the sea lions and Annie loved the baby sea lion. We also floated past a few gorilla islands.

We also road a little train around looking at more animals. Then we headed to the mini bus to do the safari part of the park.

We drove to the entrance and there was an area to park and go see the giraffes. They were amazing. Then we walked through the wallaby exhibit followed by the Lemur display.

A lot of the exhibits were open so you were with the animals. And there was staff all over to explain things.

Then we loaded back into the bus and started down the road and through the gates. It felt a little like Jurassic Park.

First we saw the rhinos which I though were flipping fantastic. There were all kinds of gazelle, wilder beasts, zebra, African cows and antelope. Colin was particularly excited about the tapirs.

We eventually drove through lion, tiger and cheetah sections.

I think all of us agree that the monkey part was the best. They climbed all over the cars, pulling off antennas, and going for rides. It was too cool. We had a couple monkeys riding on our roof and a few on our windshield. We saw the monkeys in the car behind us rip off its weather stripping, and a few monkeys with car parts in their mouth.

It was a really fantastic day.

We stopped at a pub called the Old Beams Inn for dinner. Yum.

August 6, 2013

*Please note that I normally stink at spelling, but typing all these on my phone is not helping! Hope you can understand. :0)

Today we did a lot of touristy stuff. But first we had to pick up a mini bus. And feeling daring, I went with Rob to pick it up. Yep, drove on the wrong side of the road for the first time. The scary part was that I drove the 6 speed horse van (mom you would have loved to have this back in the pony club days, in automatic) with a trailer attached. It actually drove smoothly, but since the roads are so narrow… lets just say I was liberally on the edge… And over on occasion. But I arrived with everything intact.

We all loaded up, Julia and Leah riding in the other, horse-van-to-be with Colin, and headed out. After dropping the van off to have some work done we traveled though small towns to the legendary Stonehenge.

It was roped off so you couldn’t get close, but still cost 8£ to do the loop. Interestingly there was a guy with a mega phone inviting people to walk through the sheep field and look from there for free. “I am a Druid and I do not agree with the English Heritage and that they will be exhibiting the dead in the new museum.”

Since there seemed to be plenty of other people returning from the field we did that. The catch was that there was a fence up between us and the path around the stones. But we could see the stones and boosted Sammi up to the top to take photos over the fence. Awesome!

Next we drove through Salisbury and stopped at the Salisbury Cathedral. Lets just say, amazing. Really, it was amazing. So much to look at, lots of details everywhere and everything was super old.

Then we headed to Corfe Castle. Which was also amazing. We hiked up and paid the 8£ to explore the whole thing. There was so much to explore and so hard to get photos to justify it. The story behind the castle is also amazing, google it if you are interested.

We slipped over to the Rising Sun pub just down the road from our home for dinner. Again, yummmm. Sitting by the most amazing New Zealander I have ever met, Jazzy. But note, she is my first New Zealand friend.