Lodestar Eventing

Ever since Monster and I (grammer) had a jumping lesson from Geoff Billington a few years ago Kirsty has always referred to him as “my mate Geoff”.

Lat night I got to see “my mate Geoff” again as part of the Champions Tour, a show by Geoff and Oli Townend.

Now those of you who have ever been lucky enough to see Geoff commentating or jumping will know that any show involving Geoff will not be disappointing. For all his messing about and spoofing of other riders you know that he has the ablities to match the showmanship. I loved the casual way he placed a pint of Guinness on the puissance wall in Dublin, jumped the wall, then collected his, unspilled, pint.

So you pretty much expect to see Geoff messing about and interrupting Oli.

Oli on the other hand was an unkown quantity to me. I expected from what I’d seen on TV that he’d be a nice lad with an ablity to play up to the crowd. And so it proved.

What I didn’t expect to see was a sense of humour as sharp as Geoffs. Not only did Oli manage to get his own back, but at one point as well as having the crowd in stitches he actually managed to have Geoff corpsing. I’ll not spoil things for those who are going by giving things away, except to say that this is possibly the funniest riders tour you’ll ever see, while still coming away learning some useful tips.

The Champions Tour – go see it.

Two Wheels

I recently had a day of mountain bike skills training with Ed Oxley of Great Rock.

[Image copyright and courtesy Ed Oxley]

A lot of what I had to learn was about fore/aft balance and how, for too long I’ve been leaning too far off the back of the bike. I had to learn to have my weight forward, and shift it back at the right point.

Sound familiar?

It should do.

The impact on my horse-riding has been immediately noticeable.

Four Legs

[Image copyright and courtesy Hooves-R-Us]

No longer worried about my position I’m now able to better judge if Monster will be overfaced, and I’m not unbalancing her. This season she is really coming on.

We recently designed and built a new website for local farrier Paul Conway.

Hooves-R-Us New Website

A Rare Sane Moment

Sadly, Jad will be eventing no more.

After a last summer out at grass, eating and hanging out with the boys, the time came to say goodbye.

I stayed with him to the last, I felt it was the least I could do having acted as groom for so long.

My husband lent me his piebald to go hunting. I can see why he loves her now.