The club put forward 2 teams and two individuals to the above event at Leyland Court on Feb 28th. The teams were made up of David Wood, Wendy Lappington, Bex Greenwood, Rita West, Kim Swift, Janet Stares and Ryan Hawkins. Unfortunately, at the last minute Ryan’s 2 Elementary horses went lame on the same day, so Janet Stares stepped up from Novice and Terena Gough bravely agreed to do the other elementary on Jake, who hadn’t been out for quite a while. That meant that there was a spare Novice and Kate Brown kindly stepped in at the last minute.
It proved to be a day of two halves – the Prelim and Novice riders who went in the morning did fantastically well with David on Fran winning with Rita on Lexy coming 3rd in the Novice test and Wendy on Monkey coming 5th & Bex on Canabel 6th in their prelim. This means that David goes forward to the finals at Bury in April and put the teams in a commanding position.
Unfortunately, the afternoon riders did not fare so well – a rugby match complete with ambulance, lights and siren, did not add to an air of calm in the arena nearest the road and several horses were affected by the noise. Kate managed a creditable 16th and the others unfortunately coming further down the rankings, even so the teams managed 8th and 10th out of 24.
The two individual riders were Rose Swadden and Anneka Storey. Poor Rose had an awful day, arriving late due to the chauffeur oversleeping and then they broke down on the motorway on the way home. Rose’s test had some good marks and comments, but Snoozy suffered from her nerves and had some not so good bits. Anneka’s Arizona absolutely hated a very hairy cob in the warm-up which unsettled her in her test, but did some lovely work to come 17th.
As usual there was a fantastic team spirit , with lots of support from both Marie (Trainer ) and Anya (Team manager) and club mascot Mouse, yummy cake from Chloe and a multitude of friends and family that make riding for the Club fun and challenging. Onwards and upwards x

Costumes​​​​​​​​