British Riding Clubs Northern Championships

Wow, what a bank holiday weekend!!

If you follow our adventures, you'll remember that at the end of June, our riding club team made qualification for the British Riding Clubs Northern Championships to be held at Bishop Burton. We didn't go to the qualifier with any expectation, but only to give Louie some experience at a bigger, busier and more atmospheric venue, never dreaming of making qualification!

Anyway, with the support and help of the other 3 team members, we did!

Showtime preparations...

Meet Julia Hope, Editor of Totally Horse & Pony Magazine

Back in April, I did my first guest blog for Totally Horse & Pony magazine. After a couple of emails back and forth between the magazine's editor (& creator), Julia, we decided that I would create a blog once a month, focused around Fashion & Style. It's something that I don't currently cover on my own blog so gives a different angle completely when working with the magazine.

Since then, I've done four blogs covering different areas of fashion and style. I've also been able to build up a great relationship with Julia, bouncing ideas off one another and talking about upcoming collaborations & concepts.

Take a flick through the posts that are already published.

• 6 Top Brand Picks for August
• Summer Cooler Ideas for Horse and Rider!
• Too Hot to Trot?
• Spring Greens, Gorgeous Greys…and a hint of Pink in between!

But what is Totally Horse & Pony magazine all about really?

Blogger's Corner: Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights to Turn Your Creativity Into a Big Success!

When we think of Instagram, we all think of beautiful photos that give us that inspirational feeling. But did you know that Instagram can provide you with a whole lot more that just pretty pictures?

In this edition of Blogger's Corner, I'm going to show you the benefits of upgrading your account to Instagram for Business, as well as making the best use of Iconosquare's free 14 day trial...

First up, I'll lay it to rest - there is NO tool currently on the market that can schedule to Instagram. A lot say they can, but they can't. End of. 

What they do offer is for you to construct your Instagram post, complete with description, hashtags, location and tagging of other accounts, and save it to which ever app or tool you're using with a time & date. Sounds like scheduling, right? Not quite. 

At that time & date, the tool will then send you a notification to hit post, almost like a calendar memo. As Instagram now has the ability to create & save drafts, I'm not so sure these tools now have a function (unless you're super forgetful) - just use your calendar if you are. Plus, from my experience of hitting post within these apps & tools, some of the image quality is also lost through posting from them... Never a great start to a beautiful pic!

A Guide to the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials 2017

The final big international 4* event of the season in the UK - Burghley Horse Trials. Every year, I keep saying, I must go - I know, I can't quite believe it either that we haven't been - & based in Lincolnshire, I don't have a real excuse for not going there & back in a day!!

With over 160,000 visitors across the four days of competition, Burghley Horse Trials is evidently a popular event to head to as a spectator. Equally, it's highly popular with the world's best combinations, averaging 80 each year to battle it out for a piece of the £250,000 prize fund.

It's Not Just The Horse You Need To Make Show Ready...

So, usually it's me, Sophie, that does all the posting on Team Tunnah Evening, but today, it's Andrew's turn!! Getting Louie show ready - training and cleaning - is very much left up to me, but there's also the horsebox to consider, which is definitely a job I leave firmly up to Andrew!

Here it is - Andrew's first blog!

Blogger Recognition Award - Equestrian

My blog started out as a way for me to look back at my competitions performance and training progress to make tweaks & see the progression we were making, as well as being easy to spot areas that we needed to improve on. This changed a little when Louie & I's partnership started back in January 2015 - the blog a story of my journey with my first young, recently back horse. In November 2017, this changed again following my one of my proudest times of my blogging efforts - winning Equestrian Blog of the Year. Today, I continue to blog about competitions and training sessions, as well as documenting the journey that Louie & I are on, but it has become a lot more too.

Over the last 6+ months, I have changed my content to include posts about:

• Q&As (even managing one with a Swedish Olympic eventer!)
• Equestrian events such as Floors Castle & Belsay Horse Trials
• Everyday yard life through an A-Z post
• Blogger's Corner with tips for other equestrian bloggers
• Started & run the Equestrian Bloggers Facebook group

It certainly keeps me busy!

Dressage at Leamside Equestrian

7am never seems a good time to have to set your alarm for on a Sunday morning, but this week, I didn't mind too much as it was time for our first dressage competition since the riding club qualifiers at the end of June. We were without a saddle for a couple of weeks at the end of July, so we were keen to get back to it and be out & about!

6 Picks...of Equestrian Clothing Brands

As part of my monthly feature on Totally Horse & Pony, I decided that August's edition should be my personal top 6 picks of equestrian clothing brands. We all have our favourites and our in the moment & on-trend brands that we spend whatever spare cash we have on, but I've tried to look a bit deeper than that... I've considered all of the clothing brands that I've experienced over the last 10 years since getting back into riding and highlighted my top 6 picks!

Hendersyde Park Horse Trials

After filling up on a full English breakfast at the delicious Running Fox in Longframlington, we headed through the beautiful Northumberland countryside and up to the Scottish border town, Kelso, to enjoy an afternoon of showjumping and cross country at Hendersyde Park Horse Trials. The event boasts stunning views over and along the River Tweed, and runs on good old fashioned turf, in surroundings typical of the area.

I was only ever fortunate to be able to run once here, back in 2013 in the BE90. There must be something about the events in the Borders as both Floors and Hendersyde featured highly on my favourites list. I liked Hendersyde as soon as I got there, but it also has a VERY happy memory of mine and Thomas' only ever British Eventing rosette - a 7th place. We got an OK dressage score (33) and a couple of time penalties, but a CLEAR ROUND - something extremely rare with Thomas (I think he only managed 5 across his six seasons). So I added a few extra favourite points to the event too!! 😉

July Round Up

July started with a weekend off for Louie. Well he’d actually had the full week off at the end of June, following a couple of great competition days out and a trip to Copenhagen with work. But we were soon back to it, enjoying some fantastic schooling sessions, as well as some long relaxing hacks out on an evening after a busy day in the office.

Near the start of the month, we attended an unmounted workshop run by one of my coaches, Philippa McKeever Curry in partnership with a local vets, to talk about the conformation of sport horses. It was a very insightful couple of hours, learning about the correct conformation of front legs, hocks and overall body. Philippa also brought in five of her own horses to have the audience’s critical eyes scan over them, allowing any questions about them to be directed to the vet, before loose schooling each one on the flat and over a jump.