Picnics, Tents & Horses

Catton Hall (in the top photo) is rather beautiful, isn't it? We were volunteering at the British Eventing competition there this weekend and the owners, being the super nice people that they are, let us camp in the grounds. Such a treat!



I fecking love camping. The tent held up exceedingly well to Friday night's heavy rain and Saturday night's wind and we were v. cosy inside.


Horsey bag by Cath Kidston, Bambi washbag by H&M, camp blanket by me.







Saturday saw us in a woodland clearing at the top of a massive hill. Alas, there was no real opportunity to take photos as I was too busy doing the normal fence judgey things as well as operating a video camera thingy for someone else. Still have no idea how it worked but I had to hit the big pink square on the iPhone when a horse was coming and it spoke to the video camera and did the rest itself. Very clever!


This is my fence judging face.

I am shit hot with a radio, whistle, stopwatch, clipboard and red flag. Read this post if you want to know more about why you need all those things for a day of fence judging but carry on with this one for epic picnic photos. And grey horses.

Our Sunday fence was also in the woods (a different part - Catton is very woody), where the midges promptly attacked me. I now have a HUGE insect bite on my arm which is all red and revolting. Wish I wasn't so attractive to the stupid things.  Other than that, it was lovely! Hurrah for being able to sit and watch fantastic sport all day, especially whilst eating a giant picnic. I'm all about the picnics.


We did have proper food too. It didn't consist entirely of gluten and dairy free millionaire's shortbread and sweets. Honest.


Look, I made g/f d/f scones too!


And we had mini wine. Mainly cos the bottle made me go "HAHAHA" in the middle of Morrisons but it does taste quite nice.

As we weren't needed for the final couple of classes on the Sunday, we ambled down to the water jump on our way home and I took a few splashy photos.  I'm still saving up for a better lens for sports photography but I'm pleased with how this one turned out.



One day we'll get to fence judge a water jump. The wellies remain in the car on the off chance...