Arena Eventing at Fenning Farm

Today Fudge and I managed to get out in the lorry - for the first time since last October! Spring must be on the way as I've been feeling more motivated to get out and about again. So we went to a local venue that has been under new management for about a year, to have a go at Arena Eventing.

This started with 7 show jumps, followed by a timed section of 9 XC style fences of rustics, brush, straw bales with carrots on top etc! We entered the 75cm (2'3") and 80cm classes (2'7") and managed to come 5th and 6th respectively, although the classes were rather low in numbers so it sounds better than it was! Generous venue though still gives rosettes to 6th.

I was very pleased with the way Fudge jumped, not quite so pleased with the way I rode some of it, but we got over everything! In the 75cm we had 4 faults with the planks down, and one refusal at the corner, so circled and Fudge flew it the 2nd time. I didn't get the best line to it the first time, and I don't think he'd quite worked out what it was. Anyway as it's in the XC section, there are no faults for refusals, you just have a longer time of course.

In the 80cm we had 4 fences down, but a good time of 1 min 11 secs

which turned out to be only 4 secs over the optimum time, so I was

very pleased with that. We are out of practice at jumping courses that big, and 16 fences is a long course! Mr Fudge put in some fabulous jumps, he really tried, I could feel him working them out and realising they were quite a bit bigger than last time! The 4 fences down tended to be unlucky that he just caught a pole which then fell. Oh yes and he scattered carrots and parsnips all over the arena by scraping them off the top of the straw bales with his big feet  ;-)

So - a good day, definitely worth getting out of bed early on a Sunday morning for.

Meanwhile, for those who didn't see my status on FB earlier in the week, Toffee had his appointment with the vet (and 3 trainee vets as it turned out) to be castrated. Poor thing, I felt very guilty putting him through all that, but the vet assured me it was very straight forward, and he has been fine. He is walking just a little gingerly, but hard to tell any real difference.

Today he was playing in the paddock as usual with his same age companion, so he's obviously feeling well enough to run around as usual.

So it's official, I now own two geldings  :-)