Belton - Grantham Cup

We had a good trip to Belton last weekend with Wild Lone competing in the Grantham Cup CIC*** and Tinkas Time and Tall Story in the OI and Intermediate. The horses went well but the outstanding memory of the weekend was being told, with a lot of glum faces, that Wild Lone had not been accepted at the trot up on Sunday morning, before the ground jury shouted ‘April Fool’!!! A mean trick!

Wild Lone worked really well in the warm up for his dressage and Laura Bechtolsheimer came all the way up for the day to help. Both she and Harry were thrilled with the way he worked and with the majority of his test. The judges comments have given a few pointers to work on and there were a couple of costly movements to be improved but overall everyone was delighted with it. He jumped beautifully in the show jumping, having just one fence down and made nothing of the cross country, which caused problems for a number of top horses.

Tinkas Time produced a lovely established dressage test to score a slightly disappointing 33 and another super show jumping round, having just the final fence down. He flew round the cross country with his ears pricked and gave Harry a brilliant ride. Tall Story also did a lovely dressage test but had an out of character three fences down in the show jumping and a glance off at the angled skinny out of the water on the cross country.

It was a great weekend away and we once again stayed with wonderful friends nearby who put up not only Harry, but his wife, baby, dog, groom and three horses! A big thank you to the Pocock family!