DAY 25

I woke up a bit earlier than usual to get everything ready. Since I couldn't pack my thing since the only way to get everything in the bag is if my riding stuff is on the bottom. I then ate breakfast and went outside to wait for my car. I get to the barn and go find out what group they've put me in, this is because everyone else in my group has left and they don't have enough instructors or rings for private lessons, especially on a saturday. So i'm warming up on Magnier when I see my trainer setting up the jumps. Now I know that warm up jumps are smaller then what we work on during the lesson, but the first jump she put up was probably about 1'9''. I was thinking to my self OMG what have they done, i've been jumping around 2'6'' the whole week and then on the last day I go back to the beginning, this is going to be a boring class. After everyone had jumped the warm up fence twice she put it up to about 2'3'', I then thought this is more like it, finally. Then to my suprise she put up the next jump so that it was a bounce ( for all you non horsey people a bounce is two jump close together so that there is only room for the horse to land then do the second jump; up, down, up, down) the second jump was 3'6''. Then after doing that a couple of times she put up another 3'6'' jump so it was a triple bounce, with the third jump being an oxer (an oxer is a jump that there are two polls parallel to eachother, this makes is so the horse has to go up, across, then down, instead of just up and down). This took a while since some of the riders weren't putting enough leg, or in some cases too much, so there were alot of refusals. We eventually went over to the other side of the ring were the jumper course was set up. All of these jumps were set at 3'6'', and I went over the entire course beautifully the first time without any refusals. I would have been proud of myself for not only jumping the course with no mistakes and beautiful jumping postition, but I was even more proud that I was able to do that after only riding for a week since last May. I wasn't able to do the other two hours because of my plane. I went back to the hotel packed up my stuff, ate lunch and still had a little time left over to mail my postcards and visit this cute little abbey before having to go to the airport. While at the Abbey (actually it's a Friary), which was built in 1315, I found out that there were some other realy old buildings in the area that are still around; The Franciscan Abbey built in 1464, The Trinitarian Abbey built in 1230, and Desmond Castle which was built in 1202, AND IT'S STILL STANDING TODAY, that's what I call good craftsmenship. Since I only went to The Augustinain Friary I only have pictures of it and not the other abbeys. Everything went smoothly with the plane and I got to my hotel in London with no hassels, which was realy nice. I checked in put my things up in my room and went down to the hotel restaurant. I had this realy good roasted tomato stuffed chicken with some king of pesto-type sauce, some baby red potatoes and a glass of Chenin Blanc, which was good but was a little to fruity for my taste, i'm more of a dry wine girl. Didn't realy do much after dinner other than have some hot chocolate while wathing some TV. One thing I thought was kind of funny was the hotel had a Pillow Menu, were you could order up any kind of pillow. They give you just a standard type and size, but you can order pillows different sizes and also different stuffings like goosefeather or synthetic, etc...