To remind everybody what all this show jumping training is tuning us up for, here’s the schedule for our Autumn Show at Eglinton on Saturday 22 October.
LRC 2011 Autumn League+Team Challenge
Rachel and Martina are the event coordinators and have everything in place for a great day’s competition. Francis will be the chief team selector and our single goal will be to keep the Northwest Challenge Cup in Letterkenny’s trophy cabinet for the third successive time!
Cloncaw Cross Country Trials take place this Sunday 9 October featuring classes for Open Individual & Pairs and Novice Individual & Pairs. It’s a great cross country course and an excellent opportunity to get some experience under your horse’s girth at (relatively) close range.
This Friday’s clear round jumping takes place at Glenleary. The evening will be divided into three sessions, each with a course walk, warm-up and jumping phase. Please book today with Orla on 087 643 2458 so that she can organise the groups. If you want to ride a Glenleary horse, make arrangements with Mary Finneran on 086 170 2357.
Dear Libby & Rachel,
Please pass our message of thanks via the club web site and hopefully when life returns to normal we will be back with you all soon.
On returning home from Dublin on Friday, it was a delight to view the make over the place got. Operation Glenswilly was indeed a wonderful gift. To our many friends in the LK riding club and ED pony club and the wider horse community we would like to express our deep felt gratitude for all your help and prayers and messages of support. We will always remember your kindness.
Gemma, Suzanne and Mick.
Friday evening’s third and final set of lessons at Glenleary with Mary Finneran were a great success. Beginning again with a flatwork class, the second and third groups devoted their time to jumping exercises. This time Mary focussed on riding corners and successful jump-off rounds. The 9pm lesson ended with a jump off between the four participants. Cormac, our jump-off junkie, landed the spoils on SonnyB over a 90-95 cm circuit, with Christopher on Sasha showing the benefits of regular training in finishing second.
If anybody still needs convincing about Mary’s insistence on getting the basics right, read William Micklem’s article in Saturday’s Irish Field. He speaks to international eventer William Fox-Pitt about what he believes is important in educating the rider. The answer: position and balance. Even at the age of 42 and with experience and medals to beat the band, he still checks his position and balance all the time. He also swears by the importance of the hunting field for educating riders — we only need to look at Leo and Mick for proof of that theory!
Thanks to Erica for organising the series of lessons and to Mary Finneran for her excellent tuition. We move on to clear round jumping for the next couple of Fridays. Full details to follow.
It’s a while since we’ve featured one of our equine members in our Meet the Horses series. It must be a sign of shortening days and the change of seasons that we can now enjoy the story of Britney.
If you have some time on your hands this autumn and winter, put together the story of your horse and send it through to Libby for the website. And keep poking around in your old photo albums to find more evidence of When We Were Younger.
Many of you have already watched Channel 4’s programme on the anatomy and bio-mechanics of the racehorse. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can still catch it on the Channel 4 iPlayer. It’s part of the “Inside Nature’s Giants” series.
So you thought a riding club was for riding? Well, of course it is, but that doesn’t stop us doing other things as well.
Mary Finneran’s Friday evening classes were over-booked and hugely popular. With one flatwork session followed by two jumping lessons, Mary focussed entirely on the rider, pinpointing small details which, if mastered at a basic level, will allow us to get everything right as the stakes get higher. The weather played along and it was a most enjoyable evening at Glenleary. There’s one more Friday remaining in the series. If you want to participate, book early with Erica.
Saturday saw a lovely example of the “meitheal”, the old Irish tradition of undertaking a task as a community. When has strimming grass, clipping hedges, weeding shrubberies and redding sheds ever been as enjoyable? A sizeable army of riding club and pony club members attacked Mick and Suzanne’s property in Glenswilly on Saturday afternoon and achieved in a few hours what a single family might despair of for a season. The sound of a beautifully orchestrated quartet of strimmers echoed around the remote valley, with a rustic tractor engine and well-tuned electric hedge clippers providing the chorus. Okay, maybe the line of the hedge wasn’t plumb perfect and the odd shrub might have been weeded out with the grass and rushes, but hopefully the overall effect was positive and it was certainly a lot of fun doing it. The tea to finish up with was a treat and seeing Mick again was great.
Sunday saw yet another stand off between weather and riding club but this time the riders weren’t giving in. The daytrip to Carrickfinn went ahead despite a threatening forecast. Mounting in the dying moments of the dry morning, within minutes the Magnificent Six were riding resolutely through torrential rain along the airport fence and on across to the grey inshore beach at Annagry. But try as it might, there was nothing the weather could do to diminish the pleasure of riding in such a unique expanse of strand and sandune. With the rain finally blowing off, the synchronised canter up the spectacular white strand was executed like a cavalry drill. The return trip across whin-spotted heath was marginally less orderly as the wind got up the horses’ tails.
Back at camp, Paddy had Lizzie untacked and comfortably in her trailer in time to sneak a pre-prandial swim in the bracing waters of the North Atlantic before sprinting back to catch the first burgers coming off Nadine and Damien’s grill. The barbeque crowned a great expedition and it was good to finally thwart the weather Gods. Let that be a lesson to them in case they think we’re going to take things lying down next season.
Pictured below: A Carrickfinn view of our club’s diverse life. More in the Gallery.
Surprise, surprise — Benbulben Riding Club have been forced by the weather to cancel their hunter trials planned for Sunday 2 October. What a shame. Hopefully there’s some consolation in the news that Cloncaw plan to run a cross country trial for pairs and individuals on Sunday 9 October.
With our Carrickfinn camping expedition in May and our Millers Hill weekend in September both lost to the weather, we’re hoping to get lucky with our third attempt to get away for some exhilarating riding and food cooked in the open air.
This Sunday we’re heading to Carrickfinn for the day. It’s a very worthwhile journey for a day’s riding across stunning beaches, extensive sandunes and minuscule coastal roads and tracks. Bring your own food for the grill, some weatherproof gear and your horse (or just your shoes, if you’d prefer to walk while others ride).
The weather forecast is middling and the trip will definitely be going ahead unless a hurricane tears across the Atlantic between now and Sunday. If you plan on coming along, contact Damien on 087 763 1911 for directions and times.
Pictured below: Memories of our unforgettable camping trip in May 2010.
Letterkenny Riding Club