First time Arena Eventing - loved it! Luke Howard

Hi, Luke here. Last weekend I tried arena eventing for the first time. I had a lesson with local international event rider, Harry Dzenis, on my share pony Bleu (pronounced Blue, not Bleeurgh as most announcers seem to think!). Arena eventing is basically cross country style jumping but in a school. We thought it would be the best way to try Bleu out over cross country jumps, without things getting too exciting. At Harry's yard he has 2 schools, 1 with jumps and the other for flatwork. In the jump school he had lots of jumps set up, and some were like the kind of thing you would find on a cross country course, such a brushes and gates.

Bleu had never done arena eventing before and was quite excited to begin with. After we had warmed up and Harry gave us some easy things to start us off, he settled down and concentrated much better. We started off with some trot and canter circles and then we worked over some cross poles on a bit of a circle, before moving on to the trickier jumps.