Showing posts with label Gatcombe Festival of British Eventing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gatcombe Festival of British Eventing. Show all posts

Saturday, 7 August 2010

Gatcombe, The Festival of British Eventing 2010 - Saturday




Saturday started early at Gatcombe, with advanced show-jumping under a light drizzle. The course, in the main arena, was quite tricky, it's Gatcombe so it's not completely flat, and had a few switchbacks, a double to a related distance oxer slightly downhill across the diagonal, and the dreaded planks, which were re-positioned as the last fence in the Novice Championship later in the day, and quickly became the bogey fence.

Particularly good rounds in the advanced included dressage leader William Fox-Pitt on Seacookie, and Cool Mountain, both clear but only Seacookie went on to run x-country as Cool Mountain is being saved for the WEG. Seacookie also went clear x-country, and held the lead in Advanced Section A almost until the end of the day, when Dan Jocelyn stormed round on the experienced Special Advocate to pip him into second place.

Friday, 6 August 2010

Gatcombe, The Festival of British Eventing 2010 - Friday

Gatcombe Park
I'm extremely flattered to have been asked to contribute to Monty's blog, and hope that I'll be able to hold my end up, as I'm a big fan of Eventing and Horse Trials/Talking Horse.net. Although I currently live in Lexington, KY, home of the 2010 WEG, I'm an english girl at heart, brought up via Enid Blyton, boarding school, British Eventing etc, and nothing pulls at the heart strings more than returning to Gatcombe, home of Princess Anne, in the heart of the Cotswolds.

 It's hard to describe how picturesque and unspoilt this part of the world is; how refreshing to see hedgerows, grazing sheep and cattle dotted in sloping, patchwork fields, narrow roads littered with horse droppings - how I miss hacking out in the countryside!