Lier
The preparations for going to Lier have been quite long and detailed, but not really significantly worse than they used to be. I use Shelley Ashman as a shipper and this makes life incredibly straightforward. They sent me a form and I filled in the details of the horses, the lorry, sent them all the EU and UK documentation and they generated the paperwork. The horses needed Coggins tests within 90 days of departure, and health papers, which they’ve always needed for Belgium, albeit they are more expensive now.
It’s been a while since I last packed up the lorry for a two week show, but Mark and I got most of it done over the weekend, and Holly finished it off on Tuesday. Kirsty Burnett, who was grooming for me at Lier arrived on Tuesday evening and we were away by 5 am on Wednesday morning. We stopped at Stop 24 to do customs because I know the drill there, and they are helpful with the Carnet - there was a little discrepancy with my GMR number which was easily sorted out by Shelley Ashman, we had a short wait for the ferry at Dover and were in Calais shortly after 11 am French time. We were incredibly lucky to be only 30 minutes at the vet check in Calais, as the lorries from the boat an hour before us were still waiting when we arrived.
The vet check is cursory at best, we had to move the lorry into the inspection shed, put the ramp down, and then just put it straight up - the number of horses wasn’t even counted , let alone checking their chips or health. I felt, perhaps unfairly, that there was a little bit of an air of making people wait just for the sake of it .
For the first time ever I managed to get to Lier without getting lost once, in spite of some interesting roadwork diversions, and we managed to get the lorry parked pretty close to our stables and with two horses we were unpacked relatively quickly. Lier has beautiful permanent stables in big barns and there were two clean bales of shavings already in the stables when we arrived. They also had automatic water drinkers, although I still give the horses big buckets, as our horses are used to having a really big drink when they have been worked. The whole set up at Lier makes it really easy to look after the horses. There was a fantastic big field to graze the horses in, a canter track to give them a nice simple stretch, a lunging area (actually terrifying - especially when a stallion got loose) and both indoor and outdoor warm-ups to exercise in.
My horses didn’t jump until Friday, but I was keen to give them a whole day to settle in, and we got them trotted up nice and early. Breakdance has never been to a stay away show and is inclined to be unsettled. Actually as soon as he started jumping he calmed down remarkably quickly and seemed to get the hang of resting in his stable when he wasn’t working. I kept both horses to jumping 1.20 for the first week. Unfortunately the weather was pretty horrible all week, and poor Breakdance really struggled on the second day jumping after a torrential downpour and finding it very difficult to understand the sucky, wet sand. For him the courses were up to height and very different to what he’s used to - square, forward and quite technical in a very big arena. Arietta, having not hit a pole for weeks, managed to hit one in every round, but she was jumping really confidently and well, and seemed very fresh and happy in herself. She jumped particularly well in the main ring on the final day, I think the going was better and the fences a little bit more challenging for her. I found that I was seriously rusty at the European courses, it sounds silly, especially at only 1.20, but prior to Brexit I was jumping at as many as six or seven European shows a year, and now it’s 15 months since I was in Spain, and 4 years since I was in Belgium.
As the wifi at the show was unusually good we were able to watch Britain win the Nations Cup at Hickstead and Robert Whitaker win the King’s Cup. So exciting for Rob, we all know how hard it is to win anything, let alone a 5* Grand Prix, especially on home ground, and it’s great that live-streaming and good interviewing allows us to see all the emotions involved when it all pays off. It’s a big pity that we can’t see it on mainstream TV, but Hickstead make their coverage free which is a big step in the right direction.
The weather made no effort to perk up during the three rest days, but because I was keen to step Arietta up in the second week, I took the opportunity to enter a training show on the Tuesday. I jumped Breakdance in the 1.15 - a chance for an easier round for him, and to try a different bit, as he’s getting stronger now and a little harder to contain, and Arietta in the 1.25 where she jumped round beautifully and confidently.
The show was much busier in the second week, there had been the Nations Cup at Hickstead and a big show at Valkenswaard the first week, on the whole this mean that the CSI1* classes all started late in the day. This waiting isn’t great for me, so I hand walked or exercised the horses in the morning and only Breakdance jumped on Thursday. He actually jumped a lovely round, if not clear! Speaking to Roger McCrea on Saturday he felt that Breakdance had really improved and learnt a lot at the show. It doesn’t have to be a clear round to be a good round! Breakdance had to learn to manage his anxiety away from home, work with lots of horses in the warm-up, be in the ring with two other horses, and jump very different courses than he is used to. The great big rings mean that the a lot of fences are not obviously related, and the times allowed require forward riding. Whilst the English way of very related lines of 4, 5, 6 and 7 strides are technical, they are also fairly similar, whereas when the distances are 9 or 10, then maybe followed by a four, you have to work a lot more off your eye, and you have to keep moving,. Normally I would think that this would suit my way of riding, but I’ve got conditioned to thinking that the distances will all be short for Arietta and that I need to contain her all the time, whereas here I needed to have her in front of the leg and taking me to the fence a little more. Breakdance has a very easy canter so in the UK he is easy to contain down the lines, but once again I needed to get him a bit more energised off the leg. All stuff to work on for next time.
Arietta jumped a super round in the 1.30 on Friday afternoon, it was so lovely that Karen Rees, my next door neighbour, was able to come and watch, very nice to have some company and support. The weather on Saturday got worse and worse all day. Because Arietta had been crazy fresh on Friday, I lunged her for a little while on Saturday morning, but when I got on to work in for the class she felt rather dead and it was pouring with rain. She jumped beautifully round three quarters of the class for an early pole, and then I just made a bit of a mistake to the third last, what walked an easy seven suddenly became a strong six, and although we arrived at a stride where she could have gone, I think I made her panic and she rather shot through the fence. At that point I thought, right, pick her up, get her going forward and we’ll be fine to get home, but she stumbled really badly on the wet sand and, in her efforts not to fall, fired me into the air, and I landed like a bag of cement on the sand. So annoying, she was going well, I was enjoying the round, and my lovely friend Louise Alston had come to watch - at least it wasn’t at the 3rd fence. I got up fine, a bit sore on my left side, but thought I’d be fine. As I got a bit colder I began to feel very tucked-up and a little bit short of breath. I certainly didn’t feel like jumping Breakdance later, and as the rain got harder I certainly didn’t regret that decision.
I managed a fairly good night’s sleep and we left early on Sunday, after a night of torrential rain, the whole show was delayed by two and a half hours because of the weather, and quite a lot of people didn’t jump, so sadly I don’t think we missed anything. Having got home, had a lovely hot bath and a good night’s sleep I felt a bit better on Monday morning, but mid-morning, having done most of the washing, I started coughing up blood, and to cut a long story short ended up in Brighton hospital for two nights with four broken ribs and a punctured lung. I was wearing my Horse Pilot Twist Air airjacket, and without it my injuries would have been far more significant. I don’t even have a sore back or stiff neck, and although I did bang my left thigh very hard, the air jacket absorbed any impact to my pelvis and other internal organs. The air jackets are really worthwhile, the Horse Pilot one is particularly neat and has a very neat flat cylinder which makes it much more comfortable, especially if you’re not very long in the body.
I had a few very uncomfortable nights at home before I started to feel better. It does worry me that I have become prone to falling off in the last couple of years and feel I am not as strong as I used to be. Obviously I am older, but it feels like it’s happened suddenly. I’m lucky enough to have held a jockey’s licence to ride in a point to point back in the twentieth century so I contacted Oaksey House at Lambourn and after one session they confirmed that I’m not as strong as I should be, especially on my damaged knee.
Coming home with some exercises and goals made me feel much better. I’m rigorous about my exercises, am swimming every day and hopefully can start some weight training next week. I’m giving myself a full six weeks to recover - I don’t think hurrying back after my knee injury, or carrying on after Arietta bashed my face were sensible. Hindsight being a wonderful gift, so I’m going to be patient, and work hard on my mind and body and see how I feel once I’m back on a horse. I’m hoping this isn’t the end, but I am reasonably realistic about what the future might hold.
It was lovely to be back at a European show, to catch up with old friends and make some new friends. It’s sad that it’s been made so expensive by Brexit, there used to be around 30 British and Irish riders at these shows, whereas only about 5 lorries came from the UK with a few other British riders that have based themselves in Belgium and Holland since Brexit.
The horses are enjoying a lovely holiday and so we can get fit together.
