Jockeying

My niece Kendy works as a groom at a stables in Gloucestershire.  There's an expectation that she's a competent and confident rider and to support her with that, the boss lends her one of the horses to compete at some point-to-point races on.  K hopes that one day she'll gain her license and ride her first ride 'under rules' as a (pro?) rider but until then, it's point-to-pointing.  It's a win-win situation really - the horse gets a run and keeps fit and Kendy gets a ride and keeps fit - perfect.

Today's racing was at Larkhill on the Salisbury Plains so Fi and I headed south west for 90 minutes and arrived in perfect time for her race - the first of the day.  I'm no expert, but I thought she looked very good though she was a bit disappointed to come home third, closing the gap with every stride.  I haven't been to an event like this in years but it was lovely to see the mixture of formality and country - tweed, gumboots (oops sorry - wellies!), dogs, flat caps and bowler hats.  I could easily have spent the rest of the day photographing the people and the goings on but on the drive here I'd spotted that the racecourse was only a handful of miles from Stonehenge - the real Stonehenge not the Stonehenge Aotearoa I've been to in New Zealand (see extra #4) so after Kendy's race we headed over to the stones.

Gerty dog was feeling a bit sore and tired so Fi decided to stay with her in the car whilst I spent some time walking, looking and marvelling.  It's a fascinating place though the stones were rather smaller than I had always imagined them to be.  They're still mahoosive though and it would still have been a mammoth feat of Bronze age engineering combined with impressive understanding of their celestial surroundings to raise them to their precise positions.  The added bonus was getting my very first ever pensioner discount - happy special birthday to me! ;) 

We'd planned on driving home via Kendy's stables but a 'filing error' on Fi's phone meant that google maps took us to her old workplace, 40 minutes away from her current one!  We abandoned the plan and headed home instead, tired but having enjoyed another fabulous and memorable day.