"My week that was supposed to be fairly easy in comparison to the rest of the hectic summer months turned out to be rather more strenuous than was expected. My mum was admitted to hospital for some investigative work on her back so that meant that I was left in sole charge of the yard - upwards of fifty horses and nine different members of staff!

This also meant that my mum wasn't able to drive the lorry, so our trip to Crofton Manor on Saturday was looking doubtful, especially as our employee with a lorry licence had that day off.

Fortunately, my sister, Kate, had passed her LGV test the Saturday before and, as she was home from uni, this meant she was able to take us. As she had never driven our lorry, our friend who took us to the Hanoverian show, Gina, arrived early on Saturday morning to take her for a practice drive.

With the transport sorted, we were well on our way… or we should have been. However, there had been some confusion with the staff working on Saturday morning so only two turned up to start mucking out - panic! This meant I had to leave our show groom, Amy, in sole charge of getting Bracks (Headmore Boadicia, a five year old Bellisimo M x Giorgione mare ) ready while I flew round mucking out.

We eventually arrived at Crofton and Bracks looked beautiful, Amy had done a fab job. She warmed up beautifully for the first test but had a spook at some sand bags at A on the way to the arena, so I gave her an encouraging pat and we got past them. She was still worried about them in the arena so I kept reassuring her, but she then got a bit cheeky, as young warmbloods can, and started to spook at C as well. So I then decided to use that test as a school and made sure that she went where I wanted her to go, before turning down the final centre line and retiring.

We then got her out for the second test, the qualifier, and I got hold of her a bit more in the warm-up and asked more of her, and the test was the best she had ever done. There were still a few 'baby wobbles' and some room for improvement, but I was very pleased with a score of 70.36% in a relatively low scoring class, and the win.

So all-in-all it was a very worthwhile competition, not only for the win in the qualifier but also for the lesson that Bracks learnt, and my sister said she thought I had ridden in very well… praise indeed from a family member!"