Racing was right to cancel today and tomorrow – it wouldn’t even be fair to transport horses in this heat. The team continue to graft to ensure the horses are as comfortable as possible – we’ve ridden out early and they have all been moved into the main barn which is cooler than the pens and only those on summer holidays are out in the fields. We’ll do this again tomorrow and then the weather is meant to get back to ‘England normal’!
We’ve got two students here on work experience from school for a few days – one from The Cotswold School and one from Burford School – not the most normal day to start but they seem to have fun and enjoyed watching the horses on the gallops before cracking on with jobs in the yard. A Monday is a great day to start though as Maggie Turner, one of our physios, and Nick Partridge, our Farrier, both in and the girls got to oversee what they were doing too.
We’ve had a busy weekend celebrating Harry’s 12th Birthday on Saturday. He was a Mascot for Cheltenham Town Football Club on Saturday for a friendly against Cardiff City and, although they lost 1-2, Harry had a wonderful time including a kickabout on the field during warm-up with Alfie May and Freddie was allowed to join in too. Neither quite managed to hit the cross-bar at half time but it was a really fun afternoon and is something we’d highly recommend to any footie mad kids. Yesterday was a footie party here and, to keep the boys cool during their drink breaks I drove the tractor up the length of the pitch we’d made for them and drenched them all with my watering system!
On the way to watch Cheltenham Town play we came across some cyclists up Cleeve Hill and Belinda, as we overtook someone with “Harry” on their back that looked very much like Harry Fry (it was!), Belinda remembered that Racing Welfare were doing a 24 hour cycling challenge – massive respect to them all especially in the ridiculous heat of Saturday/Sunday. We then overtook Oisin Murphy and further on we overtook Rhys Flint and Richard Johnson – even bigger respect to Dickie after a double hip replacement since he finished race riding. Amazing effort by them all and they have already raised well over £60,000. Do support them by donating HERE if you can – Racing Welfare are such an amazing charity and help us all so much.
