4 weeks today to the minute as I write this Spangle and I will be getting ready to start the 2 day 160km ride at the 50th Golden Horseshoe Ride.  We have been working hard preparing, 68km ridden 2 weeks ago with 3000m of ascent/descent all alone; SERC Grampian training ride last weekend where we flew round having a ball, eating up hills, at the same time having a photo shoot with Stephen Hammond for our Sponsorship with Petplan and yesterday another hilly 24km with Lynda and her young mare Sunlight.

We have had some fabulous flatwork lessons too with super feedback on progress and way of going which is so great to hear.  One major change I have made is trying a Fairfax girth – I fully believe this has made an enormous difference to our schooling and Spangles acceptance of work in the school.

This week we have a lesson with Phoebe Buckley – last month I went to see a demo by her – I loved her attitude, comments regarding quirky horses and thought she might ‘get’ Spangle so will see how that goes and report back – David Lawson has done a super job organising Phoebe to come up to the area and has been a great support to me too (even if he calls Endurance “Competitive hacking”!!).

Marco has had some outings too – he has been to meet young Arab Kaz at Kirkhill Forest and showed him some hills, he has been jumping at home with with fellow livery and friend Dawn and will be going to SJ training on Thursday evening with Dawn.  I’m getting tempted to jump him again myself too since he is getting back into it and flowing nicely.

This past few weeks have been a bit busy and stressful too as I left the job I have had for the past almost 12 years and moved to a new one last Monday – the thought of it all has been far worse than the reality and I feel quite comfortable with the move, much more so than I expected to for the first few weeks so that is positive.

Pictures of horsey adventures and endomondo workouts and routes to be added later!