Eventer's special

Harry and Red and Jane and I have an evening lesson with Fiona, our trainer, who is an eventer - and she builds us an Eventer's special course in the school!

First we try a corner, a bit like a parallel, but at one end the poles rest on a single barrel, forming a long V-shape to jump across. First we do it right in the middle...Harry is cool with this, as is Red. The we try it much closer to the narrower, pointy end of the corner. Harry charges into it with his usual enthusiasm, I lean forward - and he swerves a bit, half jumping the barrel. It's a good thing there wasn't a flag on it, or we'd have taken it with us! Once I have reminded myself to stay upright and riding forward until we get to the fence, we are fine.

We try a dog leg - two angled jumps with a loop between them. I have to wrench Harry between the two as he's not that quick on his feet - not pretty, but he jumps tham. Fiona points out we could have made the loop much bigger, and jumped much better - we try that, and she's right! We tackle a stile type skinny fence, and then a course - great, great, great. Finally we do a water tray under a jump – no worries, though Red has a good look right into it before jumping it.

We have to stop because it's going dark. Brilliant fun, and with just a few poles and wings!