Lauren Shannon’s eventing blog: cracking open the champers
Winter is certainly starting to settle in here in Leicestershire since my last blog. We have now had a couple frosts at night, and even though the clocks have changed it seems to be getting darker at both ends of the day!
This observation probably hasn’t been helped by the fact that I’ve been quite poorly over the weekend. I promise you, nothing makes you want to go out in the dark less than feeling pants!
Luckily, we are not flat out on the yard this time of year, and the horses aren’t as fit as they tend to be in April, so life has just slowed down for a few days.
I have still been doing a lot of work on the new yard, but we have finally confirmed final prices on everything, and will be breaking ground on the 9 January next year! It feels great to have things concrete not only in our minds now, but also on paper. We had to crack open a bottle of bubbly on Friday night last week after that realisation!
All the event horses are back in work now, including Louie (Zero Flight, pictured at Badminton). Well, that is half true — as we clipped him for Kerry’s wedding, we figured he might as well start walk work. He is now hacking a bit and enjoying the sunshine on his back (he can be a fair weather horse until after Christmas!).
We will give him another rest over Christmas and New Year, and then see if he wants to come in and do any more work. I would love to do some arena eventing on him at some point, but as he is getting older and has now sustained an injury, we will be led by him.
Perhaps what is most exciting about the rest of this month is the fact that I get to do my first shop opening at the end of it! I use Riseholme Feeds for all my horse feed as well as bits and bobs around the yard and Lindsay Redfern runs a friendly and thriving business that has recently moved just down the road from us in Wysall.
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The new shop looks fabulous, and it seems like everything has settled in very quickly, which is definitely a sign of how hard and how well Lindsay and her team work together. Anyway, their official opening is on Saturday, 30 November, and I’ve very kindly been asked to open it!
It will be a great day, so if you are in the Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire area that weekend, do pop in! It’s great to support local businesses, especially when you know they are as helpful and thoughtful as Riseholme.
Lauren
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Event rider Lauren Shannon blogged on Horseandhound.co.uk from June 2011 until September 2014. Born in Brighton, she lived in America from the age of three to 16, returning to the UK to go to university after she finished school. After university she worked for Mark and Tanya Kyle before setting up her own yard in Leicestershire. Her best result to date was finishing 9th at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials with her top horse, Zero Flight.