Winter Blogging

-10 degrees outside so I thought I would take the opportunity to go inside by the warm fire and let everyone know what I really think of England. Poor Elena is chipping 2 inch thick ice out of the horses’s water buckets. The taps in both the barns have frozen so the girls have had to run a hose from Sam and Lucy’s house. The discarded ice gets thrown outside and doesn’t melt. Something I have never seen before. We have also reached the bottom of our rug pile but the horses are all toasty warm and seem surprisingly happy, unlike their rider.

Because the arena keeps freezing and goes rock hard like the rest of the ground our day consists of a lot of hacking out. We make good use of the nearby Cucklington Hill which is great for getting them fit, but getting there and back can prove challenging because the cold weather really makes these over fed, highly spirited, boxed up eventing horses carry on like 2 year olds at the racetrack.

I have to say I have earned a new respect for British event riders. Trying to prepare a horse in these conditions whilst trying to put weight on them in the winter months is somewhat harder than preparing the laid back horses I’m used to riding in 30 degree heat in Australia’s gorgeous January.

Its started snowing outside so I guess I should go and get amongst it.