Show Jump training in Belgium

Sammi departed on her mini break to Belgium on Friday 14th February which meant she missed both Storm Dennis and Valentines Day. I am sure Ed was relieved to be able to bypass the florists on a frantic last minute "oh crap" moment as he drove home to the peace and quiet of Woofie and Grace. Sammi, Hels and Charlie Birch made it over the Channel just before the storm closed in which made the earlier than planned start well worth while.

Supernanny Alex Kelley was off for the weekend in Zurich and she was due to join up with the crew on Monday morning to take over Charlie although since her flight took her via Scandinavia it was very much at the latter end of the day. `I do hope that she truly appreciated Norway from her 45 minutes at Oslo airport. They based themselves at one of the most iconic stables in Belgium, none other than the home of Nelson Pessoa where they spent a few days training with Neco (Nelson) himself. Sammi has Hunter Valley (Gizmo), The Kincooley Ceili ( William) and Finduss PFB ( Louis) so she has some super advanced horses to play with and they are all great jumpers so I have no doubt that Neco enjoyed giving Sammi some pointers.

They have now moved to the show which is at Flanders Expo near Gent. It is a massive exhibition centre which holds everything from boat shows to, well, anything that requires a massive warehouse. The stables are in what Hels describes as, indeed, a massive warehouse and it looks pretty manic with lots of screaming horses, banging, bright lights and a busy buzzy atmosphere. Giz and William are pretty au fait with these sorts of things but Louis lost the plot at the relatively sedate stabling at Blenheim and Boekelo. He isn't known as Loopy Lou for nothing and even the stable manager at Boekelo reported that he slept for a mere 1 hour in the midst of frantic box walking and general escape attempts on the Saturday night.... and that was after cross country!

So it's pretty odd to see a video of Louis, in the midst of abject chaos, calmly hanging out over his open door casually munching on some hay. Too weird for words to be honest! Dare we hope that Parkfield's resident redhead is growing up? Or has he just worked out there is no room for a cross country track in a warehouse....

So Sammi continues her dabbling into the world of pure jumping with 3 lovely horses and remains on site until heading home late Saturday night via Hoek as its doubtful Calais will be open for horse boxes for the third weekend in a row. The season plans are all written up and all roads lead to Tokyo this year so we hope you will join us on the quest!