Vale View Para Festival

Whoop and I had a great time at the Winter Para Festival! The weather was truly dreadful but the atmosphere was warm and friendly.

We left the yard at 6.30am yesterday morning to be at Vale View in good time for the Arena Walk and then settled Whoop into his day stable. He had his breakfast and tucked into his HorseHage before Mum got him plaited and ready.

Our first test was at 3.25, the Hickstead Open British Championship qualifier, the Grade 3 Individual Championship test. Whoop was a little spooky when we went into the International Arena but he settled and we produced a Personal Best test of 71.5% from International Judge, John Robinson. That put us top of the class!

In the evening, 6.30, we did our Freestyle test. The rain was bucketing it down so the organisers let us warm up in the other indoor arena. We got absolutely soaked to the skin on the walk between arenas. I put my hand up for the music to start and all I could hear was the rain hammering on the roof! Because I couldn't hear the markers in my music we got majorly infront of it and I had to improvise to enable us to finish on the centreline. Even with these challenges we won this test too with a very respectable 71.375%!

The Para Festival is a lovely friendly show. It was great to get the chance to catch-up with old friends and meet the next generation of riders doing the Talent Spotting competition.