Wednesday 24th - Arrival in Tarbes!

We met at the stables at 6am in order to feed and walk the horses and have them on the lorry ready to leave by 7am on the last leg of the journey to Tarbes. We saw the lorry off and went back to the hotel to pack our stuff up and get ready to go. We were hoping to pick up some breakfast from the hotel before we left but there was nobody to be seen so I had to settle with one breadstick for breakfast that I bought from a service station. The journey to Tarbes seemed very long but all of us riders managed to arrive at the hotel at about the same time. We checked in and dumped our bags into the rooms and then set off to the venue with hopes to arrive before the lorry. We went in convoy and initially followed Penny’s satnav but it somehow took us in completely the wrong direction. Failing this, we then changed the lead car to the Theodorous with Martin as the driver – they took us in a more accurate direction but still failed in getting us to where we needed to be. By now, we had wasted quite some time and the lorry had beaten us to the venue. In a last attempt to get there, I took over with my trusty phone and used google maps, success! We were only a little while after the lorry and the horses had been unloaded and were being walked around by the time we had pulled up.

Once the horses had stretched their legs and had a graze we trotted them up individually in front of the team vet, physio and farrier so they could check for any problems. All was fine and we moved on to get the horses checked officially before we could take them into the stable area. Once this was done, the horses were introduced to their stables and then moved into the treatment boxes to be re-hydrated. This was done to reduce any chance of de-hydration after hours of travelling they endured and give them the best chances of being in best condition before race day.

It was around 20:30 by the time we had sorted everything out and settled the horses. My crew and I were very tired so we decided to grab a McDonald’s and call it a night. My boyfriend (Dave) and his parents had also arrived on this day (actually before us as they got the 6am flight from Gatwick) so I met Dave at the hotel we were staying in, ate our McDonald’s and went to bed ready for what would be another relatively early morning.