Roo Report – Chablis
A: France is not as small as you think it is.
B: Chablis is actually a Chardonnay, but grown in Chablis, France. Now you know.
We lost about 5 days of prep when Loretta’s flights got shuffled around. No sweat, though — Chablis is a low-key event, so a shorter runway didn’t worry us much.
The Dragon Van
One of the tricky things about coming to another continent to compete is the logistics of moving a horse & equipment without our usual truck & trailer combo. Figuring out the right balance of cost, convenience, and the reality of moving carriages around Europe is challenging.
In the end we decided to have Loretta ride with Claus, Kelly’s horse, on her horse van, and we’d follow along with the carriages and gear in a rental truck. As it happened, a rental truck with an epic graphic. It was as if we had called the rental office and said “How can we let people know we’re bringing a mare without saying we’re bringing a mare?” Cue the dragon!
The drive through Belgium was mostly uneventful until Kelly pulled some kind of ninja move in traffic that made a giant horse van impossible to keep tailing. Tara and I were suddenly alone in the wilds of Europe with a Dragon Van. We managed.
France Is Not Small
France, as I’ve alluded to, is not small. There are vast plains with rolling hills and endless fields punctuated by small villages and cities. Our 6-hour drive brought us less than halfway into France.
Chablis, and the surrounding villages are as picturesque as you can get. Tiny streets and alleys encroached upon by homes and buildings that maintain the appearance of a medieval painting. The countryside rolls with large crop fields that deceive the eye with their scale. Looking out into a field with a tractor quietly rolling over a field, one can easily think it’s your standard-issue John Deere, when in reality it’s a 10-ton, 400-horsepower behemoth with 6-foot-tall wheels.
A Very Relaxed CDE
The Combined Driving Event in Chablis reminds us that the sport is essentially the same world wide. It’s a weekend of driving organized by a small group of enthusiasts who like to get together and drive horses.
The vibe was very relaxed. It simply was a small horse show that felt more like a group get-together at a beautiful farm in a valley. We worked a horse when we wanted to work, walked obstacles when we wanted to walk, and dipped in the nearby river when the day got too hot to do anything else.
And there was napping. I can honestly say, I’ve never gotten more sleep at a horse show.
A Lackluster Dressage
It turns out, Loretta and I may have embraced the mellow a bit too much. Our dressage test was lackluster to say the least. While we’ve had some really great work with Kelly over the past couple weeks, it seems we’d left most of the gains outside of the ring.
As the French say “C’est la vie”; such is life. We were there to get our feet wet, and get back into the mode of competitive driving, not to blow anyone’s doors off.
Tokyo Drifting
The marathon consisted of 6 obstacles with a really nice balance of technical turns and fast lines.
Most of Europe has been in a drought, so the clay topsoil was hard and cracked like a desert floor. Friday night there was some much-needed rain throughout the night, making a bit of a sticky mess Saturday morning. It meant the footing would be tricky.
Loretta had plenty of grip, but things for the carriage got a little… weird. We’d have great traction heading into a turn through the first half. Once the mud hit a critical mass on the wheels, however, all bets were off and we were Tokyo drifting like a video game.
It was really amusing to me, but for Tara who had never experienced full drift on a marathon carriage, not so much. So, being that we had nothing to prove, and more or less everything to lose, we dialed things back to preliminary speeds through the obstacles. It was still lots of fun, but a more measured, conservative fun than what I had in mind when we walked the obstacles.
In the end it was a good exercise in mindful marathon driving. We put up some respectable times, and stayed safe throughout the course. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
Cones on a New Carriage
Cones was really our first big experimental effort because we’re not using our usual dressage carriage here in Europe. Shipping carriages across the globe is a pretty expensive undertaking. While I wasn’t willing to leave our rather specialized marathon carriage home, I decided I could handle using something slightly different for dressage and cones.
We’ve rented a carriage to use for the dressage and cones while here in Europe. We’ve been practicing at Kelly’s, but Chablis was our first outing at an actual event. I was quite pleased with how the carriage handled.
The course was not the full-on crazy cones we’ve been seeing at combined driving events in the past couple years, but it did have some aggressive turns and tight lines.
The first cone was a long arcing line from the start, so with no intention of getting behind on the clock, we attacked the course in a light gallop. Loretta thought this was great fun and wanted to blast the rest of the course into oblivion. The course needed a little more consideration than that.
I love how excited Loretta has gotten about the cones phase. I feel that at any given moment, I can unleash a whole lot of power on the course, yet still bring her back to a reasonable pace when things get tight. We had no problem finishing the course well under the time allowed, but we did tip one ball off a cone. Not the double clear I was hoping for, but a great start with an unfamiliar carriage.
All told, our first European combined driving experience was a great way to get started — and doing it in a stunningly beautiful part of France made it all the more memorable.
If you’ve been enjoying these Roo Reports and would like to help keep this adventure moving, we’d be grateful for your support.
— Andy & Retta Roo 🐴🇺🇸
