Up to the yard well before crack of sparra I switched the barn lights on and found Frank blinking his eyes looking half asleep – yawning and eyes rolling he arched and stretched his neck and then stretched out his back legs as far as they would go. Here’s your breakfast buddy, tuck in, you won’t be eating for a while as we’re off on another adventure. Frank is the hungriest horse I have ever known but he can’t eat when he’s travelling which is a bit worrying as we have had some extremely long journeys recently. The anxiety starts as soon as he hears the velcro of the travel boots and increases after I have put them on. He usually goes without back boots as he kicks them off but since his fall in the lorry last week he is bandaged and booted. The back boots hadn’t been used for a while and it took me some time to dig them out of storage. It wasn’t long before we were on the road. Luckily for me, the yard insomniac was bumbling about and so I had help in putting up the ramp. Called in at Tesco for fuel, carrots and Costa caffeine. Love early morning driving as the roads are quiet – feels like the old days – when motoring was fun. It was a fairly uncomplicated journey and I didn’t get lost. I parked up at about 09.15 and set about tacking up -far too late to walk the course. Met up with my other SPH massiv team members in the warm -up and we agreed a vague plan. I wasn’t sure if the brakes would work in the excitement of the chase – if it got out of control I would pull up and retire and the others would carry on without me. Anyway, Frank was full of energy in the warm-up but I managed to keep the lid on it – we popped a couple of practice fences and I relaxed and began to look about. Some fine horses here – looking a lot like racehorses…. oh and some have event grease! I’ve never been in a warm up area with horses covered in event grease… just HOW big are these fences that it helps to be able to slide over them. Everyone seems a bit wired… there’s definitely a bit of tension. The warm up area is adjacent to fences 5, 6, 7 and 8a/b so we were aware of teams going past and got a sense of what was to come. Then we were asked to go down to another warm up area – much closer to the start (and the finish as it goes). Round and round we went, girth check, I put my stirrups up one hole, round and round…then… into the start ‘gate’ area and suddenly we were off with three team members racing towards the first fence. Frank would have been off too but he had to wait for me to let him go… this american gag is quite amazing. Releasing my hold, we were off and before I knew it we were flying over the first three fences – brush, log pile and wall. I knew straightaway that I was in control and knowing how well Frank can jump I felt safe. There was a long curve to the fourth fence a drop wall and I had to apply some brakes here or we were in danger of overshooting. Fence five was rails followed by a sweep round to the right and a tiger trap, two big hedges a sharp U turn to another tiger trap. Just after fence 7 I came upsides my team members and in true raver styleee let out a fist pumping Masiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive…. so this was what we got up so early for …. this is what its all about – this is fan fookin tastic! More fences came now in fairly rapid succession – step uppers, jump downers and all around us. Every fence Frank jumped cleanly and carefully – fast and safe – no sticky moments exactly but jeez – some of these fences were big.
I found myself looking at fence numbers thinking I’m not sure how much longer I can hang on. There were quite a few ditches (Frank has an irrational fear of ditches) and two jumps over water – I seem to recall Frank giving these a bit of air. At the penultimate fence the horse in front stopped but Frank changed his line like lightening and jumped over this hedge ditch. The final obstacle – a chase fence – and as suddenly as it had started it was all over – 30 fences in just over eight minutes – Phew! Loosening girths and jumping off our blowing, sweating horses we were as high as the fences we had just jumped. Having been worried initially about not having had chance to walk the course I am so glad I didn’t. There is NO way I would have even crossed the start line. This fast track from BE 80 to Intermediate! Now it was all over I was thinking when’s the next one… Walking back to the lorry I had so much love and respect for my show horse. I’d trusted this horse with my life and he’d not let me down – not only that, he’d given me the ride of my life – at my time of life – here’s me having the time of my life.
Horses hosed down, dried, watered, fed and made comfortable time to go back and have another look at some of those fences we just jumped and check to see just how big they were. Fence 14, below, the ‘Big hedge’.
Was interesting too to watch other teams go round and have some kind of gauge as to just how awesome we had just been! Without the rush of adrenaline and viewing these fences from the ground they did look proper scary – this just adding to the general buzz we were experiencing now that it was all over. Feeling as if we had just escaped a near death experience the occasion called for a drink. Looking at the results board we were jubilant to see that we had won a special prize of best geriatric team (combined age of 160). I wasn’t too surprised about this but what puzzled me was how the team organiser knew my age. On asking he looked a bit anxious and explained that he had guessed my age. Really? Given that one member of the team was 37 years younger than myself I wondered how this had worked out. On the entry form Russell had put my age down as 45… ha ha! Now THAT does call for a drink – two glasses of trampers please!
Only Joolz and Horses 