Our New Yard!
We have finally moved yards, and I cannot begin to tell you how good and liberating this feels. We have waited years to run a yard by ourselves. It is so nice to have our own space, be our own boss and do our own thing. It has been a long time coming but feels like we can finally grow and expand. There has been a lot of tidying, scrubbing, digging, brushing and mending being done, but it is all worth it. Each pony has their own house, and even enough space to have customers in.
Now May has hit, show time has officially begun! As time has been running out this year very quickly, Hilda’s second show of the year happened to be Royal Windsor show. It is such a beautiful show, despite the distance in which you have to walk to actually get anywhere. To get from the horsebox park to the actual showground and rings you have to walk what feels like miles. We must have taken a different route each time we walked from A to B. One time we ended up walking through the stables of the armed forces.
Molly & Holmedown Chicago at Devon County
The Dales/Fell and Highland section of the Olympia qualifier was one of the strongest and the best supported of all the sections and it was where the eventual champion, Mathew Lawrence and Tower Clyde, had come from. Hilda did a lovely go round, doing a nice job of dodging the mud patches, to be pulled in third. We were thrilled with this pull in such a strong class, at Royal Windsor! Her show started lovely, until her gallop, where she must have hit a muddy patch and unbalanced herself, changing her legs down the long side. Unfortunately due to this mishap we ended up unplaced, which was disappointing, but that is showing and horses. At the end of the day horses aren’t machines, even with the copious amount of schooling and preparation that goes into them, they can still be unpredictable. This just highlights this, and you just have to mark it down to experience.
After Royal Windsor we hit a more local show, that was Devon County. I do like this show, you really feel a sense of occasion here. Possibly because it is our local county show, and the atmosphere is quite buzzy.
We started off with the Highland in-hand 4 year old and over. Where she was second to HRH The Queen’s Highland, Balmoral Erica. She later went on to stand champion in hand and supreme taking that elusive Cuddy ticket. Not bad to be second to the eventual Cuddy winner! Again Hilda did what she does best and delivered the results we were hoping for. She won her Dales/Fell/Highland ridden class then went on to take the M&M ridden championship. We are always pleased with her results, but were extra chuffed to get these results on our doorstep.
Champion ridden M&M
We then returned on the Saturday with George, our 13hh SHP. The going by this day was atrocious, extra muddy and extra sticky for little legs. The poor boy could barely get his legs out of the ground, so he ended up 4th in his class. We are still pleased with him, as he is only a baby still, and we had thrown him in at the deep end and took him here as his first show this year. He did behave impeccably, especially with his little jockey Alice Please, who rode him beautifully, despite getting a little stuck in the mud! George not Alice!
George & Alice Please
Talk about shows kick starting, the Sunday after Devon County we then went to our third show of the weekend. This time with our new visitor to the yard, Mel Alford’s baby Fell, Auckside Miracle. This was her first party ever, and she was an absolute angel, she didn’t put a foot wrong all day. She is definitely a star in the making.
We now have our first homebred back. Oakum Summer Lilly, who has been out as a companion all winter. To say her mother (Tilly) had ‘missed’ her was an understatement, as she made her feelings VERY clear and didn’t everyone know about it. She is not the most delicate of mares is our Tilly, I think our ears are still ringing!
Roll on June people!
Molly x
