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Badminton Blogger – The Final Countdown!

Our Badminton Grassroots Blogs this year are brought to you by our Supporter Gemosi. For more information please see the bottom of this post.

It’s now nearing the end of April and I can’t believe I’m writing my final ‘preparation’ blog – time really does fly! True to form the past few weeks have been rather busy in the world of Laura & Tally, and it feels great to finally be within touching distance of Badminton.

Honeymoon4Soon after Swalcliffe it was time for Ian and I to head off to New Zealand on Honeymoon for 2 weeks over Easter. We collected our Camper Van in Auckland and travelled north up to the Bay of Islands, then back down through the central North Island (think ‘The Shire’ from Lord of the Rings!) down to Wellington, then over on the ferry to the South Island. We drove down the West Coast to Queenstown and finally back up past the Southern Alps to Christchurch. We saw Hobbit houses, climbed the largest Volcano, flew over Milford Sound and cruised with Dolphins – it was a proper adventure! If you haven’t been (and you can put up with 24 hours flying to get there!!) then I really recommend a visit to this amazing country.

Honeymoon6Anyway, back to horses! Tally was not so lucky whilst I was away and was kept in good work by my instructor and friends. He managed not to disgrace himself and I arrived back to him looking fit and well – a massive relief when you’re not very good at leaving your horse!!

We got straight back into our training and took Tally down to our XC course as soon as the jet lag had worn off. Pleased to report he had not forgotten anything and was lovely and keen. My SJ trainer Ian Wills made my mum turn a particular shade of green by whacking up the fences in our lesson, to make sure we were properly back in the swing of things and ready for our final run at Ascott under Wychwood.

AuW2AuW has to go down as one of the most beautiful events on the circuit and I was really looking forward to it. Sadly the dry weather and its exposed position meant the ground had really dried up more than I was comfortable to run Tally on so close to Badminton. Being such a big horse, he’s not well suited to hard ground (& let me know by being decidedly against travelling forwards in his dressage test!), so I made the executive decision not to risk an injury jumping. I was really disappointed as the course looked lovely, but I listened to my gut and headed home.

GallopsThis prompted a last minute trip to our local gallops on the Sunday seeing as we didn’t get our XC run, for some brilliant hill work on a surface (we even found a stream to play in!). Unluckily for us there were some actual racehorses there to put us to shame, but Tally was great and we had a lovely morning to salvage our weekend!

Schooling%20SJSo this is me signing off for Badminton now…hopefully the next time I blog I will be reporting something positive!!! Our final preparations are all mapped out now (early morning interval training before the commute to London anyone?!), and Tally will be having a few final checks from various experts to make sure we arrive in tip top condition. Please keep your fingers crossed for us over the next week and a bit (I have no idea how the pros do this on a regular basis!), and I will try my very best to do e-Venting proud come the May 6th!

This post was bought to you by Gemosi who make beautiful products such as this beautiful Gemosi Amor Bracelet . Please take the time to visit our supporters to see what they can offer you as without them we wouldn’t be able to to run e-Venting.

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Katie