The difficulties continue across the pond for the once-Badminton-bound Colleen Rutledge and Shiraz. Today Colleen checks in to catch us up on the last few weeks– guess what, it’s still raining!– and tell us what it’s like to watch a British horse trial, as she attempts to re-route to Luhmuhlen CCI****. Be sure to check out Colleen’s website to support their trip in England and, as always, thanks for writing this Colleen and thanks to her husband Brian for helping to coordinate her blogs.
News flash. It’s still raining. Every. Day. More. £¥&$@?!. Rain. I ran into Samantha Clark over the weekend at Aston-le-Walls and even though there is sunshine in her video interview, don’t believe it. Notice I’m squinting and look as if I am a drowned rat, that’s because the sun never shines over here. EVER. Ok, well it does a little, but not much. I’m fairly certain that everyone blames me for the wettest drought on record. Still, after being here for over a month, I can still count on one hand the days I HAVEN’T gotten drenched while riding. Today was more solid rain (hail)! The weekend was quite tolerable, in fact Sunday was beautiful…..until I rode, and then it rained. My first experience with an affiliated (recognized) event was Ann and Nigel Taylor’s Aston-le-Walls Event. Originally, there was to have been 5 affiliated days running with up to 350 rides PER day, and then an unaffiliated day on Sunday (with the same amount of rides, do the math, it’s STAGGERING!). After the crapola kept falling from the sky, they canceled the first four days, but opened up Monday. Monday filled in just over 12 hours, and most of that was night. With everything around getting canceled, there was a panic about getting runs in and the drying effect of no rain and bright sun for a few moments made the ground almost perfect. The course was fantastic, I really should have taken Luke for a run but snooze and lose.
Very rarely do I just get the chance to go watch, and this time I got to watch some of the best riders ride! This event runs on a very tight schedule, dressage, then SJ, then XC. Starters on XC for the intermediate level were coming out of the box on 90 second intervals, and it was fantastic to watch this highly oiled machine work. Everyone gets where they need to be and there is no waiting around, they just keep feeding you through. When I left after 6 yesterday, they were still running the novice (our Prelim) division. There were 7 divisions of intermediate, and one of the novice. Each division had about 50 people in it. I was utterly awestruck with the sheer number of rides and the ease at which everything flowed. This was true for both affiliated and unaffiliated.
As to my disappearance off the blogosphere for the last 2 weeks, one was a week of entertaining the family for the “Badminton that wasn’t” and then a week of mentally recovering from our adventures. We went and did all of the touristy things that none of you coming to the Olympics will ever get to do, as you will never make it out of Heathrow (muahhhhaahahaha, nenner, nenner, nenner) and if you do, you’ll never get through London gridlock. It is the most impressive thing I’ve ever see, and I live between the beltways. First off, the bus drivers are OUTRAGEOUS, they can get those double deckers into and out of places that I couldn’t get a mini through. Secondly, the bus tours are TOTALLY worth it, especially either in the front row, or in the open top. My favorite in London though was the Tower of London. I really like museums and learning about historical subjects. This was such a treat, plus, I got to see the crown jewels. (I really like sparkly things like that. That is bling that I could live with). I didn’t get a chance to go on the nighttime walk of Jack the Ripper, nor did we get to to the London dungeon. Call me crazy, but generally these most likely would have been inadvisable to take a squeamish 10 year old and a very imaginative 4 year old on, as neither one needs to learn how to torture or dismember anyone. They’ll eventually get it on their own, I’m sure (afraid).
Then we went to Stonehenge and White horse hill. Stonehenge was neat, don’t get me wrong, it was amazing. But I loved white horse hill, not only from the subject but because I had wanted to see it for years, and never thought I’d get the chance. We were driving back from Stonehenge, and I saw a sign for it so I turned. No one had a clue where I was going, so we took multiple country roads through a bunch of little towns and then ended up a the base of a huge hill. Look up some pictures, it’s abstract but really neat! Plus the scenery there was breathtaking. We did a fair amount of castle hopping, the closest one being Broughton Castle which was just outside of Banbury. A number of movies have been filmed there, like Three Men and a Little Lady as well as Shakespeare in Love. The more I’m here, the more I love the history you see around every corner.
On the Luke front, I’ve managed to not get bucked off while letting the dragon down (he’s been a little miffed that there has not been a XC course in front of him, and he swears he could smell jumps on me yesterday). Soon I begin preparing to begin to pick him back up slowly for our preparation for Luhmuhlen. Next week, I fly home for Virginia, and then return to the beast. He has another week of long (very, very, very looooonnnnngggg hacking) and some ring work, and then back into full work. He will gallop later this week to judge where that fitness is so I can set our gallop schedule. It’s the middle of May, we are now one month out from kickoff. Reset timers, game on.
–C
