After all the excitement of our Open Day I was full of the lurgy at the end of last week, but that didn’t halt proceedings here and my brilliant team kept the show on the road and we enjoyed some schooling days out and about as you can see from the pic.
The team set sail to Stean Park on Thursday afternoon to school four horses – Reality Bites, Man in the Moon, Charmond and Champagne Poppy. Will Thirby came and sat on Poppy and Charmond, with Hannah Henn stepping in for me and riding the other two. It was the first time the two mares Poppy and Charmond had jumped proper schooling fences and whilst each have plenty to learn they both went well. We have done lots of jumping with them in the school at home and on the grass over logs, barrels and hurdles but we now need to quicken things, get them upsides and hopefully we will be away!
The young horses are all stepping up the work too, all doing plenty of cantering, flat-work and jumping and will continue this regime before heading into training. We have a yearling colt by Toronado owned by Tim Dykes in to break, he is a really good-looking colt and we will take our time with him.
The pointing season starts in just under 3 weeks, very exciting and I suspect things will kick off on slightly softer ground than in the last few seasons! The weather has been madness and watching Cheltenham at the weekend I doubted the ground has been that wet at the October meeting for a number of years. There was still some fantastic racing and I was particularly thrilled to see David Bridgwater’s The Conditional under Tom Cannon win the 3 mile handicap chase on Saturday. ‘Bridgy’ is a great friend and supporter of us here at Fern Farm and we love to see him do well.