Wow! What a brilliant couples of weeks have just flown by! I am sad they are over.

After the departure of Jasper, we were joined by the latest recruit to M.J Eventing. Jamboree, who is a beautiful grey mare and is owned by the Irwin family who have just bought a larger horse so would like to sell Jambo on. We took her cross country schooling to Coombelands where she went very well, so she is aimed at the HDRC horse trials there at the end of the month.

That week it was all systems go preparing the two mares, Twiggy and Skip, for Chilham Castle horse trials. It was my first event on Twiggy so she was entered in the BE80 and Skip was in the BE90.

On Saturday morning, Mum, Edward and I left early in the horsebox with Skip who was first to go. She did a very calm and obedient test which I was really pleased with. Disappointingly, the judge did not agree and gave us a low mark of 40. We know how much Skip's flatwork has improved and how well behaved she was so I shrugged off her mark as it is down to the judge's own opinion. I kicked on for a lovely double clear inside the time which I was delighted with. This mare is a jumping machine, she makes me smile over every fence!! Despite our dressage score, we finished a respectable 15th out of 40 competitors.

Skip's three phases can be viewed if you click here.

Sue and Ellie then met us there at lunchtime with Twiggy so Mum could push off back to the yard that way the horses did not have to wait all day. Twiggy not only did a good dressage but she got the best dressage of the day with a 23.3!! We slightly let ourselves down show jumping having two poles which ran downhill, but luckily our dressage was good enough that we were still leading going into cross country. I kicked on as I knew I could not afford any time faults so we flew round! We tentatively waited at the scoreboards for my final score. Much to my relief we were clear inside the time so had come 1st!! My first win of the season, I couldn't have been happier!

Twiggy's dressage test can be viewed if you click here.

Huge thanks to Mum, Sue, Ellie and Edward who came along to help and support for the day and to Nigel Goddard from KSDigital Photography for the lovely photographs. It was nice to see Annabel from Arka Equipe again at Chilham Castle who got a lovely snippet of Skip's cross country on video.

The next day I was in for a huge surprise. We got back very late from Chilham on Saturday so when I was told I had to be up at 4am the next morning I was not too thrilled... So at 4.30am I said goodbye to Mum as I thought Edward was taking me on a day trip somewhere! Much to my surprise we arrived at Gatwick airport where he told me we had a 6.40am flight to Barcelona!! It had been planned all along and I had no idea! I felt like a very lucky lady that weekend and touched at the planning that had gone into it. It's amazing going on holiday and not having to pack yourself! We had a really lovely few days away, doing lots of sightseeing and were blessed with the gorgeous Spanish sunshine. Arriving back in England on Wednesday evening in gale force winds was not welcoming especially as our plane struggled to land! Seems like I missed the worst of the weather that weekend (bonus!!).

Back to hard graft again, this time preparing four horses for the HDRC dressage and combined training at Hickstead on Sunday, (although we did manage an afternoon off watching the Badminton cross country on TV which is almost regarded as a bank holiday at Stuccles yard!).

It was lovely to be joined by my gran who had come along to support for the day on Sunday. Competing at Hickstead is brilliant because we can just hack each horse across the field to the showground. First up was my little Sam in the 80cm combined training. He produced a beautiful test and scored a very good mark of 24.7 followed by a clear round jumping so he came 3rd! My first competition on Jambo also in the 80cm and she was 4th behind Sam on a score of 25.2 and clear jumping. The two greys were on great form!

Next it was the turn of the two bays, Skip and Elvis. Skip was doing her first 1m class and she got best dressage in her class with a 31 (a much fairer mark!!). Unfortunately we just caught the last rail show jumping so finished 2nd. I was happy to have jumped 41 show jumps clear up until that point! As the jumping did not go high enough, Elvis just had a go at two dressage tests. In the first one which was a Novice 34 we came 3rd and we also came 3rd in our second test (elementary 42)!

The videos will be uploaded in due course.

That brings me to the end of a great couple of weeks. The horses are all going well and I look forward to our next competitions. Can't thank my team enough for all their support and help!