I couldn't take Pop to Chilham as it was too close to Badminton Grassroots, but as this is one of my favourite events, I decided to take Alfie along for the BE Novice. I was pleased with his dressage as he was concentrating on me much more than before, although he did occasionally creep above the contact. I was fairly satisfied with a dressage score of 38.8. Our warm up for the show jumping did not go well as Alfie kept demolishing the warm up jumps and I felt this didn't bode well for our round. However, when he got into the ring he jumped much better and just unluckily had the final rail of the treble down. Then off to the cross country where he jumped a clear round, although I did have some trouble getting him to focus in between the fences! I was pleased with only 8.4 time faults, which left us in 15th place in a class of 38. Alfie and I were lucky enough to be captured during the cross country by professional photographer Stephen Bartholomew who took this amazing beneath the fence shot at the hanging log to the corner, below left. Many thanks also to fellow Sevenoaks Riding Club member Jessica Leroy of Team Leroy Eventing for the photo of Alfie show jumping.