Off to the Royal Welsh Show! (Updated with pics)

[Miss Z]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to drop you all a line or two to tell you that I won't be around for about a week commencing from, well, now really as I'm off to spend my nights sleeping in a horse-box with one of my best friends in the middle of Wales, hoping that the sun is kind to us for otherwise we'll be hobbling around in mud and rain wearing heels, t-shirts and mini-skirts, and living off cup-a-soup.

Yep, crazy, I know. But all this is otherwise known as the Royal Welsh Show. And it should be fun!

I'm going to take my camera but I can't be sure how many pics I'll get, depends on the weather. If it pours, I probably won't ever want to be reminded of being soaked to the skin and relying on 'magic coffee' to brighten the day (no pun intended, lol).

Hopefully I'll get to watch some professional affiliated dressage, too, which should help me a lot with my own training.

So, I'll see you all in a week's time, after which I'll have been back to the country of my ancestors!

Zara

[Sonia59]

All the best to you.
Considering the amount of rain we have right now in France, and moving to Belgium and Netherlands, I hope your feet will remain dry.
Have fun, we wait for pics

[moosmom]

Zara,

Have a safe trip and fun time and take LOOOOTTTSSSS of pictures!!

[Anita Cholaine]

Have lots of fun, Zara!
Hope you are lucky about the weather

[Freedom]

Sounds fun! Bring back pictures for us.

[Miss Z]

I'm back, and have more pics than I expected! This is just a selection, I took absolutely loads.

We (that's myself and my friend Victoria) had a fantastic time and it was really great to be able to shop and watch the displays together. Yep, it did rain a lot, although Tuesday was fairly pleasant, and Wednesday began miserably but cheered up in the afternoon. The mud was pretty bad though, I wore my riding boots every day instead of my sandals (as planned), and on the journey there, we had to take a detour as thew road was under 5 feet of floodwater! Needless to say, the wellington boot business was the most profitable at the show this year.

Onto the pics!



Starting with the livestock, here is a bunch of adorable little piglets. Victoria and I did learn a few Welsh words and phrases, one of which was 'moch', meaning pig.



This guy was gorgeous, we wanted to take him home. Sheep No. 5303 is a breed called a Hampshire Down, and he was so friendly that we went to see him nearly every day.



A lovely family of Highland Cattle, who won best of breed.



This was the grand parade of cattle, the bull and cow at the front were the overall champions (and believe me, that bull was a gigantic creature!)



Angora goats being judged



Small animals next, and here's a guinea pig in the cavy show.



A beautiful white angora rabbit in the rabbit show - bet he takes some grooming!

MANY more to come...

[Miss Z]

There was even a rat show! Maybe I could have brought Tia with me.



A pic of one of the fountains in the showground, although it's a little hard to tell which bit is water and which is path!



Now I have plenty of horses to show you. This was the ridden arab class...



...which also included an inhand element.



A beautiful Welsh driving pony.





A team of Ukranian Cossacks put on a marvelous display of trick riding, but were hard to photograph as they moved at such speed. Video coming later of these guys, too.

Still more...

[Miss Z]

Here are some beautiful Gypsy Vanner horses in the coloured class.



The inhand championship, which I think the appaloosa eventually emerged victorious.



The Ridden Cob class, a class that I really enjoyed.



The side-saddle class was probably the closest I saw to dressage. The Royal Welsh is more of a breed orientated type show as far as horses are concerned, so the main events of dressage, showjumping and cross country were not part of their agenda. The winner of the side-saddle happened to be one of the people in the group that we went in (not her in the pic, though).



The harness racing was something I'd heard of but never seen before, so was interesting to watch.





As always, the mounted games had everyone on the edge of their seat, but thankfully, England completely thrashed everyone else, much to the disappointment of the Welsh fans. In fact, Victoria and I got some very dagger-like looks in the grandstand, as we were sat amongst at least 100 die-hard Welshfolk shouting 'COME ON YOU EN-GER-LAND!'

More on its way...

[Miss Z]

The parade of the hounds. Even though I am strongly opposed to hunting and couldn't help muttering under my breath when the countryside alliance preached that its going to fight to lift the ban, it was a nice sight to see dogs and horses stretched at full out gallop in the ring.



The shetland pony grand national - too cute for words!



The champion shire was a beautiful, powerful animal.



This is one of the champion Welsh stallions, this one is a section C I think.



Another highlight was the miniature shetland class, these guys were absolutely miniscule. I think Victoria's German Shepherd, Max, would dwarf them all.



One of the greatest shows had to be the Interhunt Relay. Teams of 4 from from hunts around Wales have to be pitted against another team and get around a symmetrical course of obstacles, passing the baton to the next team mate, and the first to finish wins. There are no penalties for a fence knocked down, but three refusals and the next rider had to take over the rest of your course then do their own, too. It was great to watch, and was a real haphazard spectacular!



A skewbald safely over the picnic table



The 'bridge' had to be walked through first...

(still more, bored yet?)

[Miss Z]

...then jumped...



... but knock it down, and you had to go back and walk it again, wasting valuable time.

And here are my videos (sorry they aren't really that long, my memory stick was filling up and I didn't want to waste space)...



Firstly the champion driving stallion, the knee action of this guy was amazing.



Cossack rider.



The Bolddog freestyle display team, yes, that IS a lorry he's jumping over.



And part of the sheepdog trials, just missing the target the time I took the shot. Ah well.

So, that's all, enjoy!