Another cold early start, wondering why I am getting up this early again, however it's soon all forgotten when I walk the course and bump into all sorts of people that I haven't seen for a few months and we get into really in-depth conversations about how much we have eaten over the winter!

I really like Isleham as an event, but the ground isn't always the greatest due to the weather and this year was no exception, so average dressages for both Hermes and Hex and the show jumping warm up also got a little wet making the jumping difficult, they both jumped well though, Hermes just tapping a pole and Hex jumping a foot perfect round.

The Cross Country started to get really boggy as time went on, Hermes did a nice calm clear and Hex seemed to tire strangely towards the end and we had a very uncharacteristic stop at the second to last, but further investigation showed that he had lost a shoe, so I'm not overly concerned. 

I had Jakata, Sonic and Hex here. All did good tests, especially Sonic who did a 29, beating, well, everything. Hex and Jakata both did a very respectable 34. Sonic and Jakata both jumped stunning clears, however, Hex after last week seemed a little unsure of the ground and had the first two fences down and then jumped like a pro! Cross Country was amazing on all three, even though they had made some rather big alterations. Hex finished just out of the placings, Jakata and Sonic finished 6th and 9th respectively, which I think was very good as the section was a little hot!

Err...what happened to spring?  I was a little disappointed with my dressage tests here, two good tests, two average marks. This was my first run on Maybe Cavalier which was exciting, he just tapped the first fence in the show jumping and then we had a lovely slow round cross country taking a few long ways err.....and taking a little detour!!! Hermes suffered from scary syndrome today and once he has started he is quite difficult to stop, so we had two down and again we suffered the same fate as most people and had a run out at an early fence, which was new and a little odd on the eye, I don't think many horses really liked it.

They have all gone mad.

Hex is all excited, a bit of tension led to a 38, which was disappointing after a winters work, Jakata and Sonic thought the whole event was one great big party set up in there honour, so, any mark was ok, a 35  was very respectable for Sonic. Jakata got a 40, which was actually respectable for the test he did, I know that there isn't that much difference between extended canter and gallop, so they may have just been sympathetic to me as I flew across the arena with a look of horror on my face!