Happy new year from everyone at Team O'Neill! Hopefully 2013 will be every bit as awesome as the past 12 months have been. Looking back, my highlight has to be representing Great Britain with Jasper back in July during those glorious few months for British sport, I have never been more proud of my country or of my pony.
Much as I wish Carriage Driving was in the Olympics, I feel privileged to have a small taste of what it is like to compete at the highest level, and you never know, one day we...
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Another 10 hours driving today and we are now at Calais parked up for the night ready to get a ferry home tomorrow morning. Ann and I went for our final ride around the farm scaring all their horses (you would think they had never seen another horse before!). We've also been playing with the kittens and cuddling their very friendly foal. Everyone else is leaving in the middle of the night but we are going to get a few hours shut eye before we leave.
 
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If I though we had had our fair share of the bad weather I was sadly wrong as todays weather has been every bit as bad as yesterdays. Having walked the course the organisers have decided the ground was being ruined after the first two classes and gave us just 15 min to relearn it. This didn't bother me and Jasper stormed round to almost make the advanced time but unfortunetly we had a few balls down due to the back end of the carriage sliding out on a few corners. It was very frustrating but ...
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Today is the Cones event of the ICKD competition and I am very proud to say they won Team Gold! Big congratulations as well to Ann who drove a fabulous double clear to take Individual Silver as well! The sun shone all morning but dark clouds were gathering ready for the FEI Marathon. I was almost last to go at about 4pm and it was chucking it down. Soaked to the skin and freezing cold we got round, navigating the complicated Section E (which had 17 compulsory flags!) to drive a neat, clean ro...
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This morning the heavens have opened for our Dressage Day. Jasper was a star today and did a lovely test to score 58 which is a result I was hoping for. Unfortunetly hi didn't rein back in the test, I'm not sure why as he tried to go backwards but the carriage wouldn't move. I can only assume it was stuck in a rut or something because he was really trying but we got rubbish scores for that movement which has cost us some penalties. We are currently in 11th place which I am really pleased with...
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Today was the ICKD dressage where Team GB has enjoyed enormous sucess with every member up on the podium! Big congratulations to Ann who drove a fabulous test with Kiwi and is currently lying in 2nd place.
Its all a bit nerve wracking for the FEI as we haven't even started yet but it will be all systems go tomorrow and hopefully the lovely weather will continue!

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Last night we had yet another huge thunderstorm  and it was boiling here again today. The trot up was this afternoon which had everyone feeling a little tense. I am pleased to say that all of Team GB ponies passed without incident and we all looked really smart. We also had another team photo shoot and got all dressed up for the opening ceremony this evening. It was a very proud moment for all of us. Hopefully it will stay dry for the ICKD dressage tomorrow!
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Today it has been boiling with temperatures above 35 degrees. We had a practise trot up this morning and had a great training session in the afternoon. Now we have been here 24 hours and are a little more settled we all ventured into Wiener Neustadt to buy ice cream at one of their adorable shops. Julie and mum went very early this morning as we has run out of everything. Emily and crew are also doing a blog on the BHDTA website so check it out. As yet we haven't tried the pool which I am det...
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Today we were up at an eye watering 5am which is 4am England time! The picture is the sun rising over their outdoor arenas. We loaded all our tents and ponies and were on the road by 6am. After 12 hours driving we finally reached our overnight stop  in Vienna. Having upset quite a few German people on the way (they are not very good at waiting patiently) and attracted crowds of people wanting to look at the ponies at every stop. It's been a long day and Kiera, Ann and I have spent our time pl...
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After a smooth ferry crossing we finally arrived at our over night stop in Calais at around 3am! Luckily we are used to arriving in the middle of the night so are well practised at it.  Both ponies are travelling fine and after about 4 hours sleep we were up for the ten hour drive to Frankfurt in convoy with Emily who kindly dragged herself out of bed to help us get sorted so thank you  to Emily and Sue. The drive was uneventful with both ponies drinking their Horse Quencher and we arrived at...
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