We had a rather disappointing dressage score of 39. The dressage sheet consisted of mainly upside down 9's which was extremely frustrating as it felt a much better test than the one we did at Thornton Watlass. One of my biggest bug-bears with dressage is when judges say "improved" or "better" yet the marks are the same. But thats all part of dressage and we were far from bottom in the section!
Now our learning curve came thanks to our Show jumping round. Unfortunately before we set off for Burgham we realised we hadn't charged the camcorder so didn't bring it. It was probably one of our best rounds, really smooth and controlled so I left the arena happy. Unfortunatly when we later went to the score tent we saw that I had been penalised for having more poles than we actually had. We quiered the results with the steward (who was extreamly helpful and understanding) but unfortunatly the result couldn't be changed. He did however, ask if we had video evidence. We explained why we didn't and also why we never thought to tape on our phones, as the rules state video evidence would not be accepted and our phones camcorder is too poor for us to look back and learn from. He then explained that he would have happily accepted it despite what the rules say- there fore the lesson we learnt is to always tape each round as you never know what could happen and how accommodating a steward can be to flex the rule book!
We did finish the day though with a really easy XC round so it wasn't too disappointing.
I'd also like to say what a great job the Burgham team did especially thanks to the Hogg family who let the event run on their land and to organisers Craig Anderson and Martyn Johnson.
Below is a short video taken on a friends phone camcorder so huge appologies for quality but many thanks for the capture as it does make this post a little more interesting!