Sunday, April 22, 2007

Frensham Sponsored Ride

On 22nd April – having had a few days of nervousness, we set off from the farm at about 7am for a trip across to Guildford for the annual Frensham Sponsored Ride. I rode this about 10 years ago whilst still a novice and whilst I enjoyed it immensely I was nervous about doing the ride on Herbs too soon as it can easily been seen as a bit of a party for horses and I'm too old to want completely looney rides these days!

Well the drive was 2 hours and the boys were as good as gold during the journey, despite there being diversions to the route we had planned and the last 30 minutes being lots of windy roads and low branches.

The ride was well organised and we parked on a lovely flat field with lots of tie up space but we were a little late – what’s new there then? Our start time was 9:05am but the stewards weren’t bothered and we were able to set off when we were ready.

The ride has over 40 optional jumps, some of which are right at the beginning so it’s impressive when people jump them because the horses aren’t even warmed up at that stage, needless to say we didn’t attempt them!

The ride was lovely; sandy tracks and a wide variety of jumps but we stuck to flat riding so as not to excite the horses too much on such a big ride. Maybe next year they will have grown up even more and we can trust them not to get too silly.

Sadly the photo jump was a rather large uninviting (for newcomers anyway) hedge with nice bright flowers by the side so not only could the horses not see over it but it was altogether rather colourful and scary so we had to leave that one too.

Both horses were very well behaved since there were over 600 taking part and whilst Herbs insisted on getting up the bums of whoever was in front on the first part of the ride he settled down nicely after the refreshment stop about two thirds of the way round.

The ride off from the stop was rather amusing as it started with a steep up hill canter which Coy decided to run up sideways resulting in his heading off in completely the opposite direction to where he was supposed to go and Herbs getting rather confused and leaning that way too! Once successfully corrected we headed to the top of the hill, arriving with two rather puffed out horses.

The rest of the ride was quieter, the ride having spaced out quite nicely and our boys were very good when other riders cantered up behind us and jumped whilst we rode alongside.
All in all we couldn’t ask for more and arrived at the finish in one piece and confident that the boys will take any ride of this kind in the future in their stride.

Here are a couple of pictures that John kindly took after we’d finished.