Gold Challenge 2012

Challenge 1 - Completed

So Saturday the 3rd March 2012 saw Maria kavalieros and I complete our very first challenge. - Horse riding. What an absaloutley fantastic day we had!

Just to fill you in a little bit incase you are wondering what on earth we are going on about - My friend Maria and I have taken on the Gold Challenge 2012 in order to raise as much money as we can for Break Through Breast Cancer Care. The Gold Challenge is simple really, we have to complete 3 hours of 30 different Olympic sports. Simple? Okay, perhaps not. Perhaps it is a bit of a mammoth task but it wouldn't be a challenge if it wasn't slightly dfifficult now would it?

As we only embarked on this challege at the begining of the week Horse Riding was our first challenge and we would like to say a huge thank you to all the riders and instrutors at 'KA Equestrian Centre' Alverley - You were all so kind and helpful oh and not to mention Patient with Maria and I. Thank you so much. Your lovliness is really appreicated and has really helped us on our Donating journey.

3 hours straight of Horse Riding I hear you say?!? 3 HOURS STRAIGHT!?! - That's right 3 hours straight. We had 1 hour of learning in the ring. Here we learnt to control our horse and how to get him to obey us. I had a bit of a speed demon that didnt like to be behind always wanted to be in front. So I had to show him who was boss :-) ... It didn't work Ronnie had a mind of his own. (I liked that about him though, He was a free spirit.) Marias horse Murphy on the other hand was very well behaved - He did really well. After a few in and outs around cones it was time for the big 2 hour hack. WOW! This was brilliant it really was. We were both a little nervous as horses are very un-predictable animals but we had got it into our heads that if were going to come off we were going to come off and that was that. So, off we went and it was really lovely to be strolling along open road and lanes in something other than a car. Every now and then Ronnie got bored of following and would perform a little jog to speed the other horses. We even managed a trot did Maria and I. It took us a few attempts but we soon mastered the up, down, up, down technique.

We are working our hats. I had so many layers on (Michellin Man)

We had such a wonderful day and cannot wait to take on the next challenge. This being Archery next week.

If you would like to sponsor Maria and I please visit - www.justgiving.com/veros and hit the donate button. The more we raise the better. Thanks folks.

Also why not like our Gold Challenge page on Facebook to keep yourself updated: www.facebook.com/goldchallengemj



More photographs to come very soon. (Me being the numpty that I am, left my camera in a friend car!)