Tails From Provence

Championnats 2014 – Friday and Saturday

Our competition didn’t start until Saturday, so we had Friday free. We did a little work with the horses in the morning and then, at MC’s suggestion, we took Quieto and Flurry over for a look at the Parc Fédéral – the horse park. In my head, we were doing this for Quieto’s sake, as he can be very out of sorts away from home. Flurry was just going along for the ride, as far as I was concerned.

Flurry who has seen it all and done it all – but he’s never been at the world’s biggest equestrian event before

Well my safe, sensible little cob who has seen and done so much was completely overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the world’s biggest equestrian competition! We found a quiet sand arena and tried to do a little work with both horses. Flurry was like a demon, trying to tank off towards Quieto, bucking and even lashing out in my general direction, although he was too far away to connect. Quieto settled much quicker than Flurry but after a while we decided that they were calm enough to go deeper into the melee and have a look at the manège where our competition would take place. There were pedestrians, cars, horses and bikes everywhere, zipping back and forth in a crazy scrum, with loads of riders and horses dressed up for the dressage fancy dress competition (no, that’s not its proper name. I don’t remember what it’s called).

Some of the horses looked happier about fancy dress…

…than others

Flurry was just about keeping it together until we were passing a jumping arena. The French take their role as fans very seriously, and every competitor had an army of supporters on the rails, cheering for every fence. Someone finished a clear round just as we passed and the crowd went wild, to the accompaniment of celebratory music. It was too much for our poor horses and they danced and jigged around us, nerves completely frazzled. Forget your equitation ethologique, we just hung on as best we could!

Eventually, after about two hours, we went back home with two reasonably calm horses. I was damn thankful MC had suggested this trial run!

Kisses for Quieto the good boy

Next day was competition day…

Alexandrine was first up in the Elite class with Max. Max is an OTTB, but he’s the calmest TB I’ve ever met. On this day, he was maybe too calm. He wasn’t really tuned into Alex and they fluffed up a couple of things, leaving her well down in the placings and quite disappointed.

Handsome Max

While they were competing, we were getting the ponies ready, with the help of one of our loyal Gaec de Pimayon supporters, Fabfan. (We had three supporters there that day, Fabfan who had driven all the way from Provence and Mr & Mrs Paris, who had driven all the way down from Paris. Pretty good for a teeny club from the wilds of Provence, in its first year of existence!)

Getting ready to load up the ponies

Girl was at the Championnats last year and came last. This year, her goal was “not last.” She is a wonderful handler to watch, but Neros can be quite spooky and difficult at times. Anything could happen…

Plaiting Neros’ tail for Girl. Note my lovely bracelet, which matches my Flurry outfit.

Boy, on the other hand, was sure he was going to win. I thought he was in with a very good chance, myself. A year ago, Spirit used to have some really naughty moments, but this year it’s clear that they have a very special relationship.

Boy and Spirit sharing a moment

They both put in good performances on the first day.

Boy and Spirit negotiating the flag in the embuches. It was much easier for them because Spirit is so small!

Girl and Neros doing the Bache (tarpaulin)

At the end of the day, they were well placed – boy was joint 5th and Girl was joint 4th out of 17. Boy was still sure he was going to win. Girl was happy with where she was.

Afternoon came and it was time for the club section. With 62 competitors, this was the biggest equifeel class of the day. MC and Quieto went first, while I waited at a discreet distance with Flurry, who was marginally more settled than the day before. MC made the mistake of attempting the very first test, the slalom, at liberty. Quieto normally does this with his eyes shut at home, but he was too distracted, and paid no attention to MC. Zero scored. Then they got a -2 at the next test, the jump, but things improved for them after that, although he did try to eat the flag in the embuches!

Nom nom nom

And then it was my turn. Flurry had been quite inattentive in the warm-up but it was difficult trying to get his attention with 6 other horses and handlers milling around. Funnily enough, I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Maybe things would have gone better if I had been…

First the slalom.

At this point, I’m thinking “Crap this line is an awful long way from the cones.” Flurry’s demeanour also does not augur well…

It went surprisingly well until the 3rd last cone, which he knocked over. I had to fix it and then redirect him back into place to tackle it again. Not easy, but somehow we managed it with a -2 for the knocked cone.

Back on track!

After the slalom was the jump on a circle. Flurry is good at this. We were going for the 15 point option – over the jump, turn and over the same jump again, than halt, outside of my ‘zone de contrôle‘, facing me. No problem. Very relaxed Martine…

I got this, Mum! No problem!

Unfortunately, a very relaxed Martine is not always a good thing. Flurry jumped, turned, jumped, halted on request. Turned and faced me, halted. Done, I thought, and BANG one big, hairy front foot stepped forward into my zone de contrôle. Fifteen points to zero points in an instant.

Oh well. The Embuches were next. That should be ok too, for the fifteen point option, I thought. The only obstacle I was worried about was the displaced trotting poles, so I decided to leave that until last.

First the slalom of barrels. Pas de problème…

Pleased with this cos I’m not pulling him. Also when you choose a 15 point option, you cannot touch the horse either with the stick or with your hands

But wait! Problème! We missed a barrel! And I don’t know what possessed me, but for some reason, I thought I could pass behind the barrel with Flurry i.e. basically lead him around it. Non non non, said the judge, you have to go back and do it all again… so we did, faultlessly this time. But I’d forgotten that there was a time limit…

…and we went past the displaced poles to do the bridge……and then went past the displaced poles again to do the flag…

…and finally went around to do the displaced poles. Perfectly. First time. Yay!

But the judge shook her head sadly and said she was sorry but we were just over the time limit. Zero score. AAARGH! So that was a total of 30 points I’d thrown away!

Next was the essui-glace, windscreen wiper. Basically the same as the jump we had done earlier, jump, turn and jump again. I was going for the safe 10 point option, with a lead rope attached to the halter, rather than via an elastic band.

Alexandrine was watching and was shocked that Flurry will willing jump from practically a standstill. That’s the good Irish horses for you, I told her

Done. Easy. And he stayed out of my zone this time! In hindsight, I’m sure he’d have done it at liberty for 20 points if I had tried.

Finally, we had the bache, or tarpaulin. I opted for fifteen points. Again, maybe I should have gone for twenty. He walked onto the tarp, halted when asked, stood still while the judge counted five seconds and walked off again into the ‘stop’ zone. And instead of asking him to stop, I let him keep on walking. I really have no idea what I was thinking, in fact, I think my brain had completely stopped functioning. The judge yelled at me told me to halt in the zone, I turned Flurry and parked him back in the zone. The judge was staring at me, shocked that I hadn’t stopped. And I have to confess, I played the Dumb Foreigner card and said I hadn’t understood. I’m sure I will never get away with that one again…

“Je n’ai pas comprise,” I said.

She was clearly wondering what to do. I was expecting a zero and I turned away and gave Flurry a kiss on the nose because he’d done a great job, all the mistakes were mine and mine alone.

And I think that action endeared me to the judge. She gave me a 2 point penalty instead of a zero, saying “You had one foot out of the zone.”(Um yeah, I know it was two or three more feet than that, but thanks very much!) I just smiled and said “Merci” and left. Thirteen points instead of fifteen, but it could so easily have been a zero. Phew.

*******

I was very cross with myself, but not disappointed with my Flurry’s performance. We’d have been placed ninth at that stage if I hadn’t screwed up so spectacularly and we’d have had it all to play for the next day. But as it was, all I could do was take comfort in the fact that me and Flurry are actually well up to the level required. We’ve upped our game since the regional championships and we did loads of things for 15 points, and I know we’re capable of doing some things for 20 points as well. Next year will be our year!

Sunday brought some surprises… next instalment as soon as I can. I’m in Ireland for Granny’s 80th birthday party and may not have much blogging time.

A bientôt!

Tags: championnats de france, equifeel, Generali Open de France

Championnats 2014 – Departure and Arrival

(Did ya see what I did there? Championnats 2014 – just in case there might be a Championnats 2015!)

Our plan was to travel in the cool of night – easier for the horses, not so easy for us 😦

By 8pm, we were loaded up and on the road! It was great to be heading off into the unknown again, with my trusty trailer behind me! The LSH and I were taking Flurry and Quieto. Max, Spirit and Neros were travelling in the truck with Alexandrine and MC.

Oh yeah. We also had the kids, Girl and Boy. But they slept most of the way. Lucky so n’ so’s.

Anyway, the journey took exactly 10 hours. 6am saw us pulling into our campsite at the tiny hamlet of Le Rabot, just outside of Lamotte Beuvron where the Championnats were being held.

The lake at our campsite

We were all wrecked – except Boy and Girl, of course. But we needed to settle the horses, so everyone got to work.

Scrubbing out water buckets…

…ejecting toads from water troughs…

…haying the horses…

…and distributing hugs where needed. Especially after Flurry tried to kick the sugar out of Quieto, forcing us to separate them.

Finally, we left them in the early morning mist…

…and went to bed for a few hours. In the afternoon, we went for our first look at the Parc Fédéral, the venue for the Championnats de France.

I knew this was going to be big. I knew it had to be bigger than any event I had ever witnessed in Ireland. Even so, I was totally unprepared for the scale of it all.

The Parc Fédéral is huge. There’s 25 hectares (62 acres) of competition arenas and 25 hectares of cross country to start with. That’s three indoor schools, ten huge jumping arenas, five dressage arenas, nine horse-ball fields, two polo fields, a sand gallop and a ring for driving marathons. On top of all that, there’s various lunging rings, more than 500 permanent stables, acres of temporary stables, three restaurants, a huge administration complex and another 20 hectares of parking space. AND THIS IS FOR RIDING CLUB LEVEL STUFF! AIRC members, sit up and take notice!

We were there during the second of two weeks of competition. All the Pony stuff takes place the first week, leaving the second week for adult competitions and ‘fringe’ events (like Equifeel. That’s us). They had just short of 15,000 different riders taking part over the course of the two weeks. This makes the Generali Open de France the world’s biggest equestrian competition – it’s in the Guinness book of records since 2012, when there were a total of 13,838 competitors. The Parc Fédéral itself is the third largest equestrian competition venue in the world, after Lexington (US) and Aix-la-Chapelle (Germany) so yeah, I was walking around with my jaw on my chest.

The Parc Fédéral was conceived by the French riding club movement and developed by the Fédération Française d’Equitation (FFE). The FFE clearly take their club riders very, very seriously. They are recognised as the cornerstone of French equestrianism and I think this is reflected in the number of people who participate in horse sports in France – one out of every hundred French people ride regularly. And why wouldn’t you, when you have a championships like this to aspire to?

We went to the vast manège where our competition was to take place at the weekend, to be met with the sight of a bunch of young people sitting on ponies holding bows and arrows. The Pony level Tir à l’Arc à Cheval was just about to start.

We watched for a while. The secret seems to be having a pony with a nice, regular, sedate canter. This gives the riders time to shoot off three arrows – one on the approach, one when level with the target and one on the getaway. This little chestnut pony was very steady and his rider scored a couple of bulls-eyes.

The pretty palomino was a bit too fast, unfortunately.

They looked the part, though. Very Robin Hood, all decked in green.

There was show-jumping and dressage going on, but I can see that sort of thing in Ireland, so we went off to watch a driving class.

It was the driving equivalent of cross-country, where they have to manoeuvre around a series of tests – up and down, a bridge, weave in and out of stuff, go into a trench and get back out again…

It was the pairs class.

One of the pairs was, shall we say, different…

Yes, a team of donkey mares! They came second! It’s nice to see a genuinely inclusive sport!

Our all-night drive was beginning to take its toll on our bodies, so we left once this class finished. We were all in bed asleep by ten. Except for Girl and Boy, who had bought multi-coloured rubber bands and set up their very own sweat shop in their tent.

By morning, they had a lot to show for their work and we all had bracelets that matched our horses and our outfits!

Tags: championnats de france, Generali Open de France

Even More Preparations

Woohoo! My trailer is now an officially registered French vehicle! Not without one final, heart-stopping, will-I-won’t-I-succeed moment, though.

On Monday, I trotted off to the DRIRE office in Aix-en-Provence to get the all important document which basically lists off my trailer’s characteristics and which has taken me four months to procure. The lady in the DRIRE office told me that this was all I needed to apply for my Carte Grise (registration certificate) at La Préfecture in Digne-les-Bains. Not only that, but she also assured me that they would give me the full Carte Grise on the spot. Not a Carte Grise Provisoire? I asked. Non, non, the proper Carte Grise. She was very positive.

At 7am on Tuesday, I was preparing to leave for Digne and I thought, you know what? I’ll just throw that large envelope in the car, too. The one that’s stuffed to the gills with copies of everything I have submitted to DRIRE so far.

I arrived at La Préfecture and the nice man at reception helped me fill in the form I hadn’t known I would need… Strike one for DRIRE lady.

I took a number and waited. I didn’t have to wait very long, maybe five minutes, before my number came up. I installed myself in front of a lady behind a window and handed over the two sheets of paper. She shuffled through them (I didn’t know it was possible to shuffle through two pieces of paper, but it is, I’ve now seen it) and looked at me.

Where is the proof of purchase, she asked.

Strike two for DRIRE lady – but no problem, I quickly found a copy of the receipt in my large envelope and handed it over.

She looked at what I had given her. Where is the original? she asked.

Well, if I had an original receipt, it would be in the file at the DRIRE office in Aix, except I lost it and they were happy to accept a duplicate… but I learned years ago not to get smart in a situation like this and I explained that the original had been lost and the company we bought the trailer from had sent us this by email. Non, non, non, she said. I would have to see the Chef du Bureau and he would decide whether or not a duplicate would be acceptable. In other words “This decision is far too important for a lowly lackey like me so I’m abdicating all responsibility for your case to my boss so that if someone, someday finds out that your proof of purchase was not an original document and All Hell Breaks Loose, it won’t be my fault.”

Mmmm okaaaaaaaay….

I calmed myself with the thought that I now had options, plural, for getting to the National Championships. Not only could I take MC’s ancient trailer, but there’s a lovely Parisian couple, who keep their horses at the farm, who had said we could take their very posh little two-horse truck if we were stuck. You SHALL go to the ball – I mean National Championships – I told myself.

Eventually the Chef du Bureau appeared and I explained the problem. He peered at the duplicate receipt, frowning. It had the name of the company and my name at the top, the make, model and serial number of the trailer in the middle and the price we paid at the bottom.

What is this? he asked.

Ah Jaysus, I thought. He’s going to insist on this being translated.

I explained it to him. He scrutinised it some more. Look, I said (in French) here’s a declaration I wrote (also in French) stating that I’m the owner. He proceeded to leaf through ALL the documents in my DRIRE envelope. Asked me some questions. Was shocked to hear that trailers in Ireland and the UK don’t have registration documents, but carry the number of the towing vehicle. Really? Am I the first person to do this in Provence-Aples-Côte-d’Azur? He also thought I said ‘Hollande’, not ‘Irlande’ so I cracked a joke about how us English speakers find it hard to say our R’s. He laughed and said he had misheard. Was the ice broken? There were a few more questions… And finally, after a pregnant pause, he said “OK” and scribbled “Ok pour la photocopie” on top of the page.

I was only shaking a little bit as I went back to the lady behind the window. Ten minutes later, I was leaving La Préfecture, in dire need of a coffee and with my Carte Grise Provisoire clutched tightly in my little fist. Strike three for DRIRE lady – but I didn’t care, I had what I needed to insure the trailer and hit the road.

Look out Open de France 2014, here I come!

The moral of the story is, if you want to register an Irish or UK horse box in France, make sure you can speak French. My French is far from perfect, but I blabber away. If I had been a dumbstruck foreigner mumbling and stumbling in pidgin French, I’d be contacting James Barrett and Sons back in Coppeen in the wilds of Cork and I’d be asking for another receipt for my trailer. (Sorry, D, I lost the original, but it made a good blog post! xx)

There may be Radio Silence for the next five or six days, depending on internet access and energy levels. We are leaving at 7pm and driving through the night (it’s cooler for the horses) to arrive at our destination very early tomorrow morning. I will be tweeting so if you want live updates, you can follow me @MaGreenlee on Twitter or follow Tails From Provence on Facebook (my twitter feed connects to that page).

Tags: Generali Open de France, registering a trailer in France