"I’ve had a very hectic last few weeks. We took Wizard (Wurlizer) to France to compete in the CDIY at Compiegne, our only chance to do a young rider international this year.

It started off badly as we were supposed to be meeting some friends at the ferry port for the 8:00 ferry, but we got held up and, due to the large number of lorries travelling, we eventually went through check-in at 8:45 to be put on the 10:45 ferry, so a long wait at the ferry port and we missed our friends, who managed to get on the 9:15! Luckily, we met some other friends who got on the same ferry as us, so it wasn’t all bad.

After we arrived, the horses had been sorted and we had set up camp, I and a couple of the other young riders went for an exploration round the showground and to look at the facilities. It was absolutely stunning; there were six full size arenas, a massive grass arena and another arena for us to work in. There were also hacking tracks that we could use, we were all absolutely gobsmacked, it really was gorgeous.

The next day just held the trot up, but it wasn’t until the evening so we had all day to work the horses and pamper them. The trot up, much to my dismay as Wizard is traffic shy, was held on the edge of a roundabout but, luckily, Wizard passed easily so we didn’t have to hang around.

The first day was the team test and, unfortunately, Wizard was very tense which resulted in a lot of mistakes, which proved very costly, especially as most of the mistakes were in movements that had double marks. This kept our score down to just under 63%, but I was expecting below 60 due to the mistakes, so it wasn’t completely awful!

The second day was the individual test and, although he started off less tense, he piaffed in his collected walk and got then got stuck in a canter pirouette, causing him to do his party trick of waving to the crowds and, as a result, ending our competition.

Luckily, we had entered him for the Inter I at Wellington premier league the following Thursday. Pardon the pun but they say there’s nothing like getting straight back on the horse! He warmed up fairly well but as soon as we entered the competition arena he got very tense, he almost felt like he was holding his breath and, to start off with, I wasn’t sure if we would finish the test. However, he relaxed as the test went on, we got both our canter pirouettes and, by the end of the test he was lovely and soft. Although the tension did cause some mistakes at the beginning of the test, we still finished 4th in a big class with 65.7%. I was very pleased we had taken him out so soon after our bad experience in France, I think it did us both good and now, hopefully, we will be back on track."