Gosh, can’t quite believe that I am starting work on this newsletter, whilst the Wimbledon tournament is being played out, this year seems to be trundling by so quickly.
As I write, our planned outing to HOYS in Birmingham in October, is more or less fully booked out – although one place remains available, so if anyone is interested in coming, please do book onto this trip and pay over the monies due £60, by the end of July. The cost covers, hire of mini-bus and driver to B’ham, parking and admission/ seat ticket, and is really good value for money.

Evening Dressage – May 
The evening dressage in May, took place on a Thurs evening, for the first time, so as to accommodate those who might be otherwise committed on a Friday, that includes me!
Entries were low, so not sure that the experiment worked, but 2 riders rode FSM tests, one rider doing so for the first time on her pony, which I know she was anxious about, but aside from one major spook, which with music doesn’t help, she completed the test, took a breath and smiled – music was fab too, rode to Queen 😊
Janet on the other hand rode her lovely pony Sam to Superman music playing in the background, the pony , wearing the appropriate superman browband.
As always, full results of all our competitions can be viewed under the events page of our website.

Charlton Park Funride
A great deal of time / effort goes into planning & running our charity ride through Charlton Park Estate and this year the principal players who were doing the hard graft, from January onwards, were Claire Lawson & Angie Ponting, this fixture ran on Sunday 16th June 2019. So many thanks to them both & others for giving up so much of their time for the Club’s major event of the year. Sadly, because of heavy rain for two weeks immediately preceding the ride and also on the morning of the ride itself, this had a drastic effect on the turnout of riders entering on the day, overall we had 37 riders compared to over a 100 in 2018, although those who did come had a thoroughly good time and unbelieveably didn’t get wet, quite how is a mystery, as there were some very heavy showers. One lovely rider, not part of the ride but a livery at CP, who was hacking out, cheerfully lobbed some money into the charity pot too. The photographer who was booked for the event, also dropped out due to illness but our fantastic club member, Simon Kearsley, stepped up and took some fabulous photos that can be viewed in the gallery section of the website.
Despite numbers, the ride still made a profit, just! The committee will decide shortly how much to dip into our own funds to ensure that our 3 chosen charities don’t miss out, CP Church, Watershed RDA and Wilts Air Ambulance.

Alyce King
The club has had a long association with Alyce, whilst a child & teenager she often attended the club events and latterly has become a welcome sight in the dressage judges box at our competitions, generous with her time, positive comments and smiley disposition.
Sadly she recently suffered a freak accident and spent many weeks in hospital, but is now at home and under-going rehabilitation, although I believe having to use a wheel-chair, for now at least. I am sure that I can speak on behalf of all the club members & website followers in wishing her well, for a full and speedy recovery and hopefully she can get back in the saddle in the not too distant future.

Clear Round Show-Jumping – 1st June
We had only one entry, so it did not run and in all likelihood we shall not run such an event again but focus our attention on the better- supported fixtures.

Long Arena Dressage – 23rd June
This was held at Brook Stud this year, as that venue afforded ample flat parking and a very large arena, on which the warm-up and competition itself took place. Our judge for the day was Casey Stickland ( International dressage rider), writer was Kim Lewis, scoring Inge & Clive and I took a few photos and called quite a lot of tests.
Those that came and supported us, thoroughly enjoyed the experience of riding a long test, daunting but actually much more time and room to ride the movements, although some riders would agree, that they lost marks due to inaccuracies, so a huge learning curve, but all finished the day with rosettes & happy faces, some photos of the day are on our FB page and we do plan to run this again next year.

Chiropractor Talk by Leigh Miller & Pud night
This was a well supported evening “do”, a demo and talk
by Leigh, with a question / answer session afterwards, immediately followed by eating loads of puds, cooked by Kim, Claire and me. No better way of spending a Friday evening chatting, sitting and supping drink and puds in the evening sunlight and even Benni, the horse, seemed to enjoy himself, see FB page for pics.

Forthcoming dates for your diary;
19th July – Evening Dressage, incl FSM
27th July – XC schooling, Ravensbrook
8th Aug – Evening Dressage, incl FSM
11th Aug – XC schooling
24th Aug – XC schooling
31st Aug – ODE, if are able to help on the day please email me.
21st Sept – local pleasure ride, details to follow
4th Oct – Organised coach trip to HOYS ( Birmingham )

All details of our fixtures are on our website/ fb page, look forward to seeing you all in the coming weeks.
Rita.

A jockey is walking down the road leading a racehorse when he bumps into a friend. “What are you planning to do with that nag?” the man asks. “Race it,” replies the jockey, surprised. “Well, by the look of it,” the man says, “You’ll win!”