Sam Penn's trip to Withington Manor

We have spent this weekend down in Gloucestershire at one of my favourite events, Withington Manor. Unfortunately due to its popularity we had both Brooke and Flynn balloted out and so it was just Captain Christy (Smurf) and Boundalong (Muffin) who made the trip. Both had dressage on the Saturday afternoon, Smurf was first up, in Advanced section M1. Apart from two minor blips (those white letters are very scarey things!) I felt it was a pretty good test, however we got a rather dissapointing mark of 43, we seem to get the recurring comments of 'tight through back' or 'needs to work more freely over back' however he feels pretty good and was very accurate, so it' s back for more homework with Mary Ann to see if we can figure out what we do differently at home compared to out at a party. Next up was Muffin in Intermediate section H. Its only our 3rd event together and taking a bit of time to get used to each other. The work at home is really starting to come together, but at present she is still getting tense in an arena, and then makes mistakes, such as changing in counter canter, then when corrected she throws a huge strop!! However things were better than at SofE as the first half of the test was lovely, getting 7's for all her trot work and there was even an 8 in there too so her mark of 42.3 was as expected.

Overnight we stayed locally in the most beautiful yard, that apparently is usually home to polo ponies, although I'm not too sure about the early morning alarm call from half a dozen peacocks! We were back on the showground nice and early for Muffin's showjumping at 9, the better ground is certianly more suited to her than the mud we have had recently and she jumped the most fantastic double clear, for the first time I asked her to move on a bit more xc as the time is always tight here, we had a few instances where we had different ideas but I think we will get used to each other pretty quickly and then with the dressage sorted she will be a real superstar. We finished 10th on 52.7, my first placing at this level this year, lol.

We then had a long wait until 4.30 for Smurfs' showjumping. 8 faults was comparativly good, and we set out xc feeling pretty confident. he gave me a lovely ride up until fence 20, a combination consisting of a left-handed corner, 4 strides to a wagon then 5 strides to a right-handed corner, where he very naughtily ducked out of the last part. I am always the first to say if it was a 'rider error', as was the case at Burnham Market, but on this occasion it wasn't and I was very disapointed as he jumped it fine at the second attempt and then happily finished the course. So Mr Smurf has a lot of homework to do before Houghton Hall CIC3*. As 707 missed his Advanced run he will now be headed for the 2* along with Muffin and hopefully we will be taking Pusiden for his BYEH debut. However we have plenty to do before then, our next outing is Moreton Morrell in a couple of weeks, so until then.........x