Lauren Shannon’s eventing blog: first BE memories at Milton Keynes
After rambling on last week in my blog about chickens far more than horses, it’s nice to have an event to talk about again!
We headed off last weekend to Milton Keynes, with a BE100 and a novice ride for me, and two BE100plus rides for my students.
I absolutely love Milton Keynes horse trials — every year I go I am reminded of my first ever BE event there back in 2003. I was in the then “pre-novice” class, and managed a technical elimination for jumping an extra novice fence on the course that I was meant to travel around.
I think I was completely over-awed at the whole thing — I couldn’t believe how many people there were at a 1-day event, or at the fact I saw Pippa Funnell walk past me not once, but twice. I remember thinking it was a big dream!
Anyway, I managed to jump all the correct fences last weekend, and finished a very credible 6th in the BE100 on my student Bex Graham’s horse, Crispy — his first run at that level. I also had Will (As You Will) running in the novice, and a lovely dressage test and a clear jumping round was marred by a very babyish 20 penalties across country. He is a naturally bold horse, so I am not worried about it at all, but it was a very educational course for him.
Both my students, Alice and Jess, jumped lovely double clears in the BE100plus, but were running HC so couldn’t place. All in all, a lovely day in the sunshine at an event I will be sad to see go from the BE fixtures list.
We spent the 2nd half of the weekend taking pictures of the new yard for my new website. The brilliant Adam Fanthorpe came down to visit and took some brilliant photos of everything from the walker to me being attacked by Batman, the still-evil cockerel. Above is Adam’s picture of Quixotic, her daughter Alta and Gentel Lux.
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The website will hopefully be live next week, and then we can really showcase the new yard, and look towards getting an opening party booked in the diary!
Until then, the babies are out again this weekend at Eland Lodge, before a busy week next week at Barbury and Buckminster horse trials. No rest for the wicked!
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.