Catchin Up - Hartpury Horse Trials and Ashbourne Show

It's been just over a week since my last post, which is not what I intended with this blog.  Unfortunately, I've had a mad week at work so didn't had time to write about last week's excursion to Hartpury before I went off on this week's, to the Ashbourne Show.

First, Hartpury.  Above is a picture I took on my new fixed 50mm lens, which I am in love with (more on that later, hopefully).  The picture is of Paul Tapner, who is my new favourite eventer. Well, new since I sat at the main arena at Badminton and saw him go out and come back from his cross country round, on Inonothing, who also happens to be the horse above.  Anyway, that round turned out to be the round of the Badminton champion, and he was so lovely about the horse in interviews afterwards that he's my new favourite.

Anyway, apart from the presence of Mr Tapner, the whole event was lovely.  The weather was great, course was interesting, and the people were lovely.

Amongst the cross country course was a fantastic water complex at the lake, which had seen a few falls during the day (nothing serious, I think).  Here are a couple of the best pictures that I got there.

On to this week, I have been to Derbyshire, for the Ashbourne Show.  I thought this would give me the opportunity to have a look at something a bit different to the usual showjumping/eventing, and it did!  This was a fantastic country show, with lots of shire horses, sheep, cattle and goats, as well as lots of other things including a lot of light horses classes.  Amongst the light horses classes that I saw were side saddle and miniatures, so there was loads of variety!

There really was too much at Ashbourne to mention in one short post, but please see my Flicr set at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthwareing/sets/72157624651281971/ for a selection of what was on show. Here are a couple of examples!

Skipton (2) Horse Trials

Here's the first of my entries on the events that I've been going to in order to practice the equestrian side of my photography.

I went over the Skipton on Saturday for the horse trials there.  They were running BE100 and BE90 events on the Saturday.  It was a lovely event, with a really nice atmosphere, and well organised.  It was lovely to see a lot of spectators there, and the organisers making the weekend into a real local event.

As usual at the one day events I got a look at all three elements of the sport; dressage, show jumping and cross country.

The cross country is possibly the element that most people are familiar with, and that which is associated most with eventing.  I thought that the course at Skipton was lovely to watch (not being a good enough rider to even consider riding a cross country course, I'm not qualified to comment on that!); it made good use of the farmland that it was set into, with the competitors crossing through wooded areas, water, and through exisiting gates.  There was a big hill towards the middle of the course as well, and if you were to stand at the top of it you could see a lot of the course.

The only problem came when I was sitting on the ground at fence 13 in the afternoon - I was waitng to try and get a shot of the next competitor going over the fence, and all of a sudden they came absolutely charging through the gate at a massively high speed!  There were no strings to mark the course at this point, and as I was sitting down I was feeling particularily small and vulnerable to being trampled on!  The way of the course meant that the horse looked at me as it came through the gate, and seemed to be coming right for me, before straightening up and getting over the jump.  There was a very scary moment though where I thought the rider wasn't going to be able to turn him, and he was going to end up on top of me!  They did get over the jump, though.  Even the fence judges remarked on how fast they were going though!  I did manage to get a shot (just!), but it wasn't my favourite, so I have used it to play around with a silhouette idea...

So that was this week's event. I'm kind of planning on heading off to Hartpury next Sunday for the international eventing there, but that trip is dependent on a few factors, because it is based around 2 and a half hours drive from where I live.