May 2005, Dalemain
Every year we mad carriage drivers gather in the Park of a beautiful Georgian-fronted country house called Dalemain. Our " fun event" always follows the Fell Pony Stallion Show held on the Saturday at the same venue, and we drive an established route which used to be part of the show drive for the stallions at this show. This is followed by hazards (usually simple ones) and a cones course.
The event is always a magnificent drive through the greening countryside under the budding trees. Every year I am amazed again by the myriad shades that green can be. I take photograph after photograph and drink in the electric brilliance of the new leaves, everything from grass to the topmost branches of the wild cherries and lime trees. The lambs are sturdy and frisky, the cattle are turned out and gallop alongside us as we pass their fences, and the hawthorn, apple and cherry trees are bursting with delicate white and pink blossom. Under the hedges the wild arums are still tightly furled... and the spring convoys of tourist walkers are bunched up on the grassy banks eating sandwiches!
I would have loved to take Ruby to show her off on the Saturday but - surprise!! - the driving class is only for stallions and geldings. Mr T has strutted his stuff there twice and been second twice, but sweet though he is, he isn't the horse that Ruby is. However, I had quite a task on for this weekend as my duties were as follows:
Sat: do an interview for BBC Radio 4 about Fell ponies and trotting races of the past; help organise the marathon and hazards for the Sunday, check the distances and learn the hazards for myself; talk to the owner of Dalemain about some exhibits I have been given for their Fell Pony Museum... take photos of the Fell pony stallion driving class (very poorly attended - just ONE entry with a shabby exercise cart and the pony's forelock tied in a bunch with baler twine.)
Sun: transport Ruby, cart, harness, horse "feed", water, rug/sheet and waterproof sheet (just in case), young "first timer" groom Christopher, lunch and event paperwork all safely to Dalemain, get the hazard judges organised and briefed, brief any competitors who hadn't driven there before, give the starter her list of runners and times, give the cones course builder/judge his list of entries and work out the max. time from his measurement of the course; and then start getting Ruby sorted out to actually drive ourselves!
Luckily we had lots of helpers and apart from the very new secretary who was having "canary fits" helping her husband to prepare their pony to drive, everything went off very calmly; with the experienced hazard stewards teaching the less experienced and several people saying "I hardly feel I've done anything to help." Which is wonderful, and how it should be... nobody should feel stressed or shouted-at, which would make anyone decide not to help ever again. OK we didn't have a huge number of drivers, but next year it will be packed, because word will go round that it went well this year.
The really nice thing was that Ruby was much more settled than she was at the Easter Drive. It's so good to see a horse using its wits, and Ruby was quite cool about travelling (no sweating or stamping and no getting wound up in her leadrope) and also about standing around tied to the horsebox while I dealt with people. I suspect she would have quite liked to organise it herself and thought all the visitors were only her rightful due. She is an artist at leadrope stretching in order to eat grass (no matter that the grass was all of one inch long) and it wasn't until my very pregnant daughter tied her up on about 8 inches of rope that Ruby stopped munching, or trying to.
Our marathon was 8km in length, all one stage at any pace, with a fairly easy max time and 4 hazards. Ruby was wound up as we began to walk around the Park before our start, and used the whizz of motorbikes racing down the main road as an excuse to semi-startle and break into trot, but she took my calming orders in good part and carried on walking until it was our turn to start. She'd seen people setting off and was curious about where they'd gone to so once our 6 minute gap had elapsed, she was off at top speed to find out! We clattered through the cobbled entrance to the courtyard and under the carriage arch, then out along the stony track towards Dacre Castle. Chris, on the back step, spent a lot of time in mid-air as the bumps and rocks flung him upwards and I was never quite sure if the squeaks and exclamations were pleasure or horror, but "the pace was too good to inquire".
Ruby performed magnificently, keen but biddable, and with her huge "I have ambitions to be a Dales" trot, we almost caught up the young Welsh Sec C who'd gone off in front of us. We have some lovely photos of her thoroughly enjoying her first go at " hazard diving" (the missing R is entirely appropriate). I thought she might hang a little as the she tired, but I gave her big smooth turns and she swung sweetly either left or right, ears pricked and full of running. My problem was that the obstacles were very mathematical and despite my drawings and studying overnight I got marked with Error of Course in 3 out of 4 of them (they were pretty horrible to remember). Of course 2 out of 3 times I didn't know I'd gone wrong so I just told Ruby how brilliant she was, so she preened herself and surged onward!
The cones course was not a novice pony's course, though it could very easily have been, had not so many of the pairs of cones been offset from the natural angle of approach. We had 35cm clearance and with those twisty approaches, I once again revealed my true vocation as a Grannie Driver - hit 2 cones AND got time faults. But again, Ruby did not mind; she wasn't sure if she had to drive between or past the cones, so we wobbled a lot, but the sound of a couple of cones going BUMP didn't phase her. I used to drive a little Sec C cob who would dither between the cones saying " OOOh, I'm going to hit it, panic panic, oops now look what we've done, panic panic" - thank heavens Ruby doesn't do that!
Both at the end of the marathon and after her cones round, she hustled back to the horsebox at a trot... though as we passed the gate into the courtyard, she veered that way, as if to go round again!
Chris had a good time too. He was shyly pleased that his Mum and Dad had come to watch and take photos. At one point I had to tick him off, because he unfastened a rein from the bit while he was holding Ruby when she was still harnessed to the cart; and I felt really bad about doing that, with his parents standing there. He's never done that on our yard! But it was too big a safety step to let him off, and he bucked his ideas up and made her stand still too - previously she'd been walking all over him! Happily, his parents are both teachers who fully understood that a big risk must never be taken if it can be avoided. They didn't stay till the prize giving; I think Chris was tired out, as much by excitement and expectation the night before, as by his actual job on the back step! So, once I got home I unearthed a nice Driving Club rosette for him and took it round to his house. He was hugely impressed with it (it was twice as big as the one we actually won so he was doubly chuffed!) and I gathered it was going to have pride of place on his bedroom wall.
Ruby was immensely pleased with herself the whole day, unashamedly soaking up all the admiration and interest she gained by being my first new pony for 13 years!
She would have come in on time from her marathon had it not been for aforesaid Grannie Driver getting things wrong. As it was, we were only half a minute over time despite rambling around the outside of three hazards saying, "well gate E must be here somewhere, all the gates go inwards!" . She stood untied in her " loosebox" in the back of the horsebox and "nebbed" with great interest at everything happening around us, over the back gates. I'm sure she believes that she supervised the scoring and the prize giving. (I was tempted to offer her the pencil and calculator.)
It is SO nice to have a pony whom you can see behaving better each time. She was nowhere near as excited on this trip as on the last, and much more interested in what was happening. I have posted some pics ... not the one of us in full flight through gate C in the wrong direction though.
I'm sorry to have to tell you that here in Cumbria we have had six dry days in succession with drying winds and the turf was thoroughly dry and just great for driving. NO frog stranglers here... for once!