Pre event season camp

In April myself and my horse Tony headed to South West England's premium event centre for a pre-event season tune up!

The camp spread over 3 days and we had several showjumping and cross country sessions planned as well as a blast on the gallops and a fun accumulator competition on the final morning!

Having left home to make the relatively short 2.5 hour drive to the venue we arrived in good time and I got Tony settled into his stable before lunch. The first afternoon we met our instructor and spent the first part of our ridden session getting to know each other.

We moved onto grid work, which Tony made light work of- wearing the ecorider freedom jump saddle, I was firmly secure despite Tony’s best impression of being a rocket launching himself through the air!

All tucked in for the night and ready for our first cross country session in the morning- I made sure my tack was all in working order and gave it a good polish with the ecorider leather balm.

Awake nice and early to give tony a good breakfast before completing yard duties and then one of cross country!

Tony was absolutely LOVING this, it was his moment to shine! And shine he did, nothing phased him and he flew over each and every jump he was pointed at, we even tackled a few of the bigger jumps!

After lunch on the second day we had another show jumping session, this time focusing on technical lines. Again tony was loving it and made it all look easy! Taking on skinny jumps on an angle and piecing together a course utilising “jump off” turns!

Resting up for our final day and the mini competition being run. The accumulator, accrue as many points over jumps as possible in a set time, bonus points for a more difficult joker fence- but knock it and you lose it all!

To be expected I had my competitive head on and camp out of the start box like a bat out of hell, unfortunately causing us to knock the first fence! However we redeemed ourselves and cleared the joker twice and finished on a decent score putting us in 4th out of 18!

We finished the weekend with a final go around the cross country course looking at things we found a bit more challenging. For us that meant steps, Tony took a bit of convincing but by the end of the session he was flying up down left and right!

Overall the pre-eventing camp was always intended to be a confidence building experience and that it certainly was! We left feeling on-top of the world and driven to have a great first season out eventing!