Taking it easier!

On the Tuesday after Hickstead Askeaton and Heidi had all their shoes off and Camilla and I took them up to their lovely Autumn grazing in a huge field up on Ashdown Forest. Luckily this is where Steff works in the mornings, and I check and feed them twice a day, so it’s quite a well catered holiday destination. Kvint has a shorter holiday at home where I can watch his figure more carefully, and he only gets a fortnight of complete rest so he doesn’t lose to much fitness, after that he has been hacked every other day for two weeks before coming back into proper work. With Emma and Luna also turned out in another field this gave me plenty of driving about to do, but also gave me time to catch up with masses of personal admin, and do those jobs that never seem to get done in the summer, like getting the chimney swept, the Aga serviced, the cats spayed and my Speed Awareness Course done.

Sadly, after five great years, Steff has been offered a fantastic full time job, and so we had a little farewell party for her, and for Izzy who has now started her degree at Oxford University before we went off for a little holiday. Elena Watson has also said a sad goodbye to Lyra who has gone off to Somerset where she has already won a class at her first show for her new owners.

Mark and I took the opportunity to have four days in Prague. Mark has been longing to go to Prague, but we were waiting for Maximillian Hotel to be reopened as Sophie was part of the team that redesigned the interior there. It was well worth the wait. Not only was the hotel absolutely lovely, but we were also completely charmed by the City of Prague. We spent the first day walking all over the city, visiting the castle, Wenceslas Square with it’s statue of St George and the Dragon, and the beautiful winged lion statue, which was given by the British to commemorate all the Czech airman who fought in the RAF in the Battle of Britain.

On the second day we took the subway to the end of the line and then a bus to the former military garrison at Terezin which was used by the Nazi’s as a concentration camp during World War II. More than 150,000 Jews were detained at Terezin before many of them were transported to the extermination camps such as Auschwitz. At the end of the war there were 17,000 survivors at Terezin. This was chilling reminder of the atrocities committed in relatively recent history, and certainly provoked much thought about level of genocide we still see in the world today. I think this was the bleakest place I have ever visited, when they say there are no birds at Auschwitz I am sure they are right, we didn’t see a single bird or animal in Terezin.

Photos below of the lovely Maximillian Hotel where Sophie was part of the design team from Conran & Partners. We loved it.

We had a call from April while we were away to say that Askeaton was lame in the field, so April and Camilla very kindly rescued her and brought her home, Camilla and I then brought Heidi and Riri home two days later. Sadly Askeaton has remained lame in the foot ever since. You always hope that foot lameness is something simple like an abcess, but her lameness hasn’t taken any familiar route, she has been x-rayed, and we are still none the wiser so she is now booked in for an MRI scan to try and get to the bottom of her lameness. She is actually sound at the walk for the first time today, and she is being very, very good about being kept in. Luckily it is so wet that none of the others are being turned out very much at the moment.

In the meantime Heidi and Riri are back in full work. Kvint has been to two shows, and has been cross-country schooling at the wonderful new all-weather cross-country course at Hickstead. This is all part of his preparation to hopefully do some more derbies next year. Heidi has now been to her first show as well. She extremely excited to be out and about at Felbridge, and jumped herself into 4th place in the Newcomers, Kvint was extremely good and was 2nd in the 1.20, so we are all set now to head off to Wellington next week for Heidi to try her first Foxhunter and Kvint to do a 1.30.

As always many thanks to everyone who makes all of this possible, Mark, Camilla & April, Saracen Horse Feeds, MacWet gloves, just Equine, Stride Management and Precision Solutions.