Setting off at Kings Forest Ride 2010
This weekend my whole family and 4 out of 5 ponies packed ourselves off the the Kings Forest in Thetford. We went last year for a shorter ride but this year me and Dad were going for our first 64km (over 2 days) while the others were doing shorter single loops.
We started off ok, with me Dad and Bryony going off for the first 32km loop leaving Shine and Tasha behind to ride a 17km with the Barretts . Our ride went well and Tally appeared to be in possession of a brain which is a first for him with Annie bouncing along behind and Bryony actually staying behind so I could avoid kicked in faces from Bubbles for a change . Towards the end we met up with Tasha and the Barretts. Shine was VERY pleased to see us and ran over at speed. Apparently while we were gone he’d been a complete terror and mashed Tasha trying to find us and she’d just about managed to survive but had come out without her chaps on. We all walked in with a much happier Shine and me and Dad had our first ‘vet-gate’. We had to run into the hold area sloshing ponies and get the tack off quickly so we could vet as soon as the heart rates got under 64bpm. Annie’s came down immediately with tally soon after and we probably could have run in after 2 minutes apart from the millions of taped on boots Annie has to wear because of her arthritis and her tendency to cut her self with her over sized hooves. We eventually got in after just 5 minutes which we thought was pretty good for our first ever vet gate and we vetted in with sound horses and lowish heartrates before taking the ponies back to the corrals.
We had a lovely barbecue and a talk on lameness in endurance horses that evening before bed in the tent we put up after our ride. Everyone except me slept badly because I managed to bagsy the spare double mattress we brought by accident.
In the morning we went to see the ponies and brought Annie and Tally out to tack up, we didnt need a vetting before we
Waiting to go on the second day.
started this morning because of the gate the day before. This ride was a lot faster even though the ponies were supposed to be tired from the day before. We ran into a lot of race riders on our way round and shortly overtook them and stayed ahead until about 1km from the end of the ride when we decided to walk in to cool the ponies off when unfortunately everyone came passed and fizzed them up again so we ended up jogging in.
We both finished with Grade 1′s from our nutty speed and low heart rates and Bryony had the same from the day before and Tasha had a pleasure ride completion. We had entered the Family 100km Challenge class just because we could but found out that all the other, much more experienced families had either been eliminated or retired and we were the last ones standing. We got a massive silver cup and 3 huge red rossettes at the presentation so now we get to do a bit of quiet gloating.
Me and my sisters collecting the Animal Health Trust Trophy for the 100km Family Challenge
Pretty pleased with the ponies and its been a nice weekend 
Tags: 100km, 64km, endurance, Kings Forest, vet-gate
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