I went out this morning to find the weather was not quite as warm as I had hoped, but I was close to a t-shirt so not complaining too much. The horses seem to be pretty settled in to their stables. The stables here at Pau are nice permanent stables with very large areas for tack, which makes everything pretty easy especially when it rains which sometimes it can do here - with a vengeance.
I went through some of the tack, feed and bits and pieces with Nobie this morning and she is starting to understand some of the subtle differences of the feeding regime in the UK as opposed to the US. We tacked up the horses and took them for a nice long walk around the gallop track and onto parts of the cross country course that you are allowed to hack on and had a sneak peak at some of the jumps. Apologies for some of these pictures of Nobie and I, but we had to persuade a very large, dodgy looking security man to take the photos. I don't think he even spoke French let alone English, but once the camera was pointed the right way he managed to take this very bad photo that you can see in the album. We do think it is of us.
The rest of the day was spent sorting out the last bits of the lorry and going through lists of items that Nobie may need. I rode Don again in the afternoon as he was quite fresh in the morning - in a nervous, young horse sort of way. Cam felt good this morning so he was just allowed to have a session of my simple and user friendly magnetic blanket! With the horses put away for the night I called over to Andrew Nicholson for a visit and catch up. He, as normal, was a bit tired after driving all night on his own so left him to go to bed and headed to a well reviewed small Brasserie in downtown Pau which turned out to be a real find (see photo of amazing dinner)... we are loving Pau so far.
Tomorrow the competitor briefing is at 12 and the jog is at 4:30 and hopefully the course might be open for a quick walk in between (we are on French time down here).
Joe
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