Sunday, July 3, 2016

Wit's End Horse Trials


Well, I may be posting for my own amusement here so I took the opportunity to place three photos on the page, as no-one else is posting here and at some point I wonder if the site will simply disappear from view.
Yesterday, Wit's End Horse Trials happened again in our area.  It may be one more year that it will run, I'm told and then the two people who own the farm property and run this event, may retire it. It's a huge amount of work.  They've run this event with FEI Status, had many participants and spectators, I met Bo Derek at one of them, she came and sat down beside the jump I was a judge at...I told her I was reading her book she'd written and her comment was sweet and humorous..."poor you"...actually it's a nice book to read.   She bought a pair of high purple Wellingtons...as did I. I eventually gave mine away, I don't have a boot jack to pull them off.  Bo is a beautiful woman, still.   The land at Wit's End is one of the most magnificent pieces of property here on the Niagara Escarpment for Cross-Country Eventing, up and down, you have to be a mountain goat to navigate the land.  As I am getting older and have volunteered there in different capacities, my favorite place of all time is out on the X-Country course as a jump judge.  This means, we have a walkie/talkie, a clip board, and note, if there is a clean jump, a runout, a fall, horse or rider, and so on.  It's not an onerous job and one that if it's not raining involves being out on the top of a hill or in the valley, watching magnificent and athletic animals and riders race across the fields and taking the interesting jumps and difficult ones at that.  I've yet to witness a horse falling and I think this is one thing I know I would not cope with well.  It's one thing for a rider to come off and often they do, but a horse down is not something I ever want to see.  Yesterday the weather was gorgeous, big fat clouds scudding across the sky, the wind blowing to the point of almost knocking me off balance, eating my picnic lunch out in the field, feeling free, the wind in my face.  There is nothing I can think of better than this...feeling free, away from the claustrophobic happenings of life.
Rosey P in S.Ont.Can.