Ready for Road

Well I'm all packed and my bags are loaded into my friends car. Horses & all their gear is to be packed in the morning...Fingers crossed we don't forget anything or else, Le Gasp, we might have to indulge in some shopping!

Peak-a-Boo

So what has happened since i last posted...Well Nancy & I went on our first Solo hack from the off-site field and it went really well apart from the fact I foolishly didn't "Suit Up", Barney Stinson would have been ashamed of me & rightly so!
I ridonculously decided to try hacking without the fly rug and we were swarmed - I have never been harassed by so many horse flies at once - evil beggars! Nevertheless we survived and I shall strive to do better in the future.

How heartwarming - I think they actually do get on!

Thursday I had to day off work to re-sit my drivers test...and I PASSED!
Phew - can you say that is a load off my mind, as I seriously couldn't afford to do it again. Pah - wiped my savings doing it those two times so really did not want to fail again!
To celebrate I went to a tack shop to splurge on a new bridle for Miss Nancy-bell, well i went with the intention of buying her a new pair of reins as she helpfully snapped her pair after our solo hack adventure on Wednesday evening. However I ended up going for a new bridle (which came with reins) as there was only a fiver in the difference in price for reins on their own or the bridle with reins - as the store didn't have the type of reins I prefer, I figured why not get the bridle as I figured in the long run i'd be saving...warped way of thinking, but hey...welcome to my world! :p

My celebrations continued on Thursday with an hour poo-picking in their field - hence the photos of the lovely ladies "helping" me then ignoring me as they realised they weren't going to get any treats from me. Although in saying that, bless my two girls who kept wandering over to me from time to time to check in. O kept her distance, probably sulking as the first thing I did on getting to the field was put back on her fly mask.
L & I then went for a hack with O & Kika and the two dogs - it was a lovely way to spend the evening, followed by L coming to the house for take-away & watching part of my recording of this year's Hickstead Derby...I still haven't seen it all and don't know who won - shhhhh. Don't tell me ;-)

Long story short (although are they ever from me?!), the bridle didn't fit Nancy's huge head - so she has inherited Kika's bridle and Miss K got the new black one with grey trim from photo above (not a great photo - shall endeavour to do better on hols!). Poor Nancy has yet to get her own bridle, so far both have been Kika hand-me-downs, I'll have to be careful or she might start suffering from middle child syndrome!

Friday evening, we hacked back to the yard and turned the three ladies out on their winter turnout area so that they could do some eco-friendly clearing of the area. Meant I had access to the arenas to ride today (Sunday). Technically I had planned to also ride in the arenas yesterday (Saturday), but it was so hot that by the time I had all my gear on at home and was ready to walk up to the yard - i was so hot that I decided against it - stripped off into shorts & tank top and went to sit in the garden with my kindle instead. The arenas in that heat wouldn't have been any fun for any of us!
However today was a lovely cool day with rain - who'd have thought I'd be saying that ... although weather-gods, if you read this. Please don't send any rain to the beach! 20-25C is perfect weather for me, no rain or excess heat needed for me...Honestly I'm not asking for much! :p

So today i rode Kika first in her new-shiny-too-small-for-Nancy bridle, I really am quite sad that it doesn't fit N as I think with her colouring teh bridle would look so much better on her - but c'est la vie, it wasn't meant to be and when I rang the shop on Friday morning they didn't have it in a bigger size and weren't getting any more stock in.
*Le Sad Times*

But enough of that, I rode both girls in the arenas today for the first time (for Nancy) in forever - if you are new to the blog I was having trouble keeping msyelf & N relaxed when we tried to work in an arena so I changed track and just hacked her in the woods so that we could both get to know each other better and bond!
Both girls were excellent, Kika was an absolute superstar. Another friend rode at the same time as me and she said she has never seen us both so relaxed - I thought that was a really nice thing to say. Plus it felt great to "work" her again after all our hacking, although I have been incorporating some work into our hacks - relaxing just happens to win out a lot of the time! :p
Nancy and I got on a lot better then we had been before I stopped riding her in the arena. We still had some ups & downs, where she'd try to speed up and/or fight me some bit - but we managed to get back on track each time as I put her through w/t/c. I was super happy with her and myself!

Right, best sign off here and hope I can get some sleep tonight. We're hoping to hit the road tomorrow morning between 8.30 & 9 so that we can hopefully get through the ring around Brussels before the lunchtime traffic hits - keep everything crossed for us that all goes well with trip north & indeed the two weeks at the beach!
I have decided against taking my laptop with me, so unfortunately I am going to fall even further behind on my blog reading - argh...hopefully I can catch up when I get back!
In the mean time, I hope you all keep well and I'll fill you in on all the fun, hopefully with photos when I get back!

Hasta Luego!