Sam Penn fills us in on the latest from Eridge Horse Trials

Once again it has been a busy week for us, on Tuesday we had the Retraining of Racehorses clinic with Nick Turner, rescheduled after its previous cancellation due to Nick being trapped in America by the volcanic ash cloud. I joined in with Brooke, a lot of the work was going back to basics over poles which actually was very good for us and drew my attention to just how much Brooke tries to push out through his right shoulder. The following day was again spent having lessons with Nick, I had the first session with Smurf to see if we could find out where I'm losing my line through the advanced combinations, I'm hoping to have got to the bottom of it but I'll let you know after Barbury!

Sid has grown up a huge amount since our last session and I think might be growing up to be a little bit special, he has that 'bring it on' attitude and is always looking for whats coming next. My last lesson was on my new ride Rory, (Charter Party). Rory is quite a large horse and has been ridden by a much stronger person than I so we will take a while to get used to each other, as he will have to learn to think for himself rather more than he does at the moment, but he certianly has the scope and the ability and I think will be a very interesting project. We have managed to organise for Nick to come down to Golden Cross for several more training days approx once a month, spaces are filling fast so if you are interested contact Ian at info@goldencrossec.co.uk.

For once we had a whole weekend without having to leave Sussex, at one of our nearest events, Eridge Park. This is always an event that you know will be a very hot day with pretty hard ground, but the team this year had obviously put in a huge amount of work and the ground was pretty good. Saturday was a nice easy day with just Tickeridge competing. It was a return to more normal scores for dressage, but I felt the test was actually better than at Rackham, as he wasn't trying to hang on my right rein, we came out with a 29. We added no jumping penalties to this in either sj or xc but we were not very quick and picked up 8 time faults for eventual 5th.

Sunday was the busy day with 4 ponies competing, Coevers Diamond Clover and Charter Party were in the Novice sections with Captain Christy and Boundalong in the Intermediate. Flynn managed one of his better dressage days, not getting strong at all, for a mark of 34.5, he was still a little less than his usual self in the showjumping, and had the first part of the double down after backing off it a bit, but he jumped much better than in the last few weeks, the run accross country I think will have helped get his confidence back too, he started off a little bit quietly but towards the second half of the course I felt his confidence coming back. We finished up with 7.6 time penalties but this was still good enough for 7th place. My ride on Rory was just planned to be a bit of a 'getting to know you' day out. Some of his dressage was lovely and showed what potential he has, although there were also some bits that fell apart a bit, his mark of 39.5 actually compared quite well. The showjumping also went reasonably well with just one pole down. The cross country was an interesting ride, I allowed him his head a little at the start but soon decided that this was a bad idea as he didnt come back to me when required. I did re-establish some control in time for the sunken road which he popped very sweetly, but then rode the rest of the course with the handbrake firmly on. He is a very brave horse and totally straight so the course felt very easy for him, but we definately have a lot of work to do. Despite having a good hold of him for most of the round, he was still 2nd fastest in his section which I think says it all! But it was a super result for him to finish up 4th.

Muffin is still in digrace this morning after her performance in the dressage. The first few movements I thought we had some real improvement, she felt more relaxed and rideable throughout the trot work. Then she became very tense whilst walking and then into the canter but then changed instead of maintaining counter canter and when asked for a simple change, decided to throw a strop, stand up and wave at the judge. As always she jumped a lovely round showjumping, her one down was entirely rider error, having ridden 5-6 on a nice 6 strides in the morning it then rode much shorter over the bigger fences. Being completely out of contention we then just had a nice hack around the xc which she did jump beautifully, and to my suprise we finished up 11th, only just outside the ribbons.

Last to go was Captain Christy. He gave a nice calm obediant test and 31.4 is his best dressage mark so far with me, unfortunately he decided to act as if he had never seen a showjump before and had 2 down, but he redeemed himself across country, with a fantastic round, finishing full of running and one of the fastest in the section adding 11.4 time faults to finish 9th, our first eventing rosette together, its been a long time coming but he so deserves it, and it has put to bed a few demons as it was at Eridge last year that we had to pull up and afterward discovered his heart problems but he is certainly fighting fit now and ready for our next trip to Barbury for the CIC3*. 707 is also feeling well again so will be coming out for the RoR class, so fingers crossed for that.