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I've thought about doing a British Eventing (BE) One Day Event competition with my lovely horse Grace for quite a while now. Then I saw some really sad but inspiring news about a brave young lady called Hannah Francis who loved and competed her horses in eventing competitions, and a great challenge named the Wobbleberries who are raising money inspired by Hannah. You can view more about Hannah and Willberry on their JustGiving page too. 

Sadly Hannah lost her battle with bone cancer on 1st August 2016, and her family have set up Friends of Willberry Wonder Pony to raise money for bone cancer research and to fund horsey dreams and wishes for seriously ill young people.

For those of you who are not 'orribly' horsey and want to know what we will be doing, this will mean Grace and I will have to train hard for several months and then do three horse sport disciplines all in one day by latest Autumn 2017. A One Day Event (ODE) consists of:

Dressage ('horse dancing') - although ours is more like wobbling round a wedding evening dance floor than the elegant ballet moves of Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro 😄

Showjumping - jumping a course of brightly coloured, easy to knock down jumps. The height of which that  our Olympic stars Nick Skelton and Big Star wouldn't even get out of bed for!

Cross Country - Solid (big) wooden, scary objects in your way on a nice ride out round a picturesque country park. Banks, ditches and water lakes are dotted in just to test your nerves... Yes, this is the bit most people know that the Queen's Grandaughter, Zara Phillips (Tindle) does, but she does do the other bits too...

We will be competing at the starting height you can do at a BE ODE, the BE80T, 80cm height jumps. This may not sound huge to some, but believe me, galloping up to a solid fence at speed on 600kg of muscled animal that has its own mind can be challenging! Especially as I'm not getting any younger  and I'm not as brave as I used to be! Grace is fine and loves it, but she has me the jellified muppet on top to put up with, bless her 😋

I'd love for you to help me to support Hannah and her family's charity as it is such a worthy cause, and I will  endeavour to keep you posted on our progress.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my page.

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