EN favorite Colleen Rutledge is busy in England preparing herself and Shiraz for Badminton. Lucky for us, she’s taking the time to write down all her adventures! Keep up with Colleen and read the latest updates on her site at colleenrutledgeeventing.com. Thank you for writing, Colleen, and thank you for reading.
I kinda like driving on the wrong side of the road. It’s not too bad when you remember that you sit closest to the center. And the cars coming towards you will probably try to hit you anyways. The most exasperating thing for me has been finding third gear. I can drive a manual transmission, I’ve done so for years (off and on, never for extended periods of time). But here, I get in the car, on the right side, reach over my left shoulder for my seat belt, then remember it’s on the right, put the key in the ignition (same side as home), start the car and off we go. The pedals are still the same, so that’s good there. The gear shift, I thought, was going to be tripping me up forever. I’m great in first and second, but then try to shift to third, nope. Fifth. So my shifting goes like this, 1,2,3?nope-5,crap,4,crap,3,finally!,4,5. If I don’t think about it, I’m generally fine. Meanwhile, the traffic is slowly starting to pile up behind me due to my inability to rip through the gears in a lightning fast pattern. Oh, well. At least it wasn’t me who hit a pedestrian today! But that compounded my real problem. I only know one way to and from the barn. So when there was an accident that blocked the whole street, I then got to put my ‘let’s try this way!’ to the test. I did manage to make it home without major incident. (Only one illegal u-turn, but I figured the police had more to worry about with injured pedestrians than arresting me and everyone else had already done so.) Excellent!
This is the best part, the directions to the barn. In order to get out of Banbury, I go through the cross (center of town circle), turn right at the Three Pigeons, go through three circles (stay straight each time) and then after you are out of town (the sign says Shakespeare country) look for the second turn. But the first road is called Second Turn, the second road is called First Turn. So that conversation went as such, “turn on the second turn, but not Second Turn, it’s the first turn, you want First Turn, which is in fact the second turn”. Definitely a ‘Who’s on first’ moment. Then through the village of Shotteswell, which is a one lane road up and down blind corners and you’ve reached your destination safely (hopefully). It really is quite fun to drive though.
Our gallop today went well. I had to postpone it a day due to the weather yesterday, and then again this morning, but this afternoon it was fantastic! Or so I thought. Get HRH tacked up, and in that process, there’s a quick shower (read: deluge). Welcome to England! Sun comes back out and I hurry up to get the gallop done up a great hill in back of the yard. Go on our initial trot, and as we’ve crested the hill, we get hit with another rain shower. This one is very cold, and wait…..quite solid. Crap, it’s hailing or whatever it’s called over here. Ohhhh, this does not please HRH. Especially as we are only trotting. The craptastic storm passes as quickly as it came up and we get back down to our gallop. Finally, what he’s been looking forward to all week! RUN AWAY!!!!! Only a few minor discussions about speed and direction and avoidance of badger holes, and we danced all the way home.
Tomorrow, dun dun duuun, FLAT WORK and hacking!
-C
