April 23rd
Pat and I set off for the Punchestown Festival with the Tradestand. It’s normally a fun meeting and excellent racing. However the week was badly marred by atrocious weather conditions.On one of the days we had 98 miles an hour gales and had to evacuate the shopping village as the marquees were only built to stand 50 miles an hour winds! However there was only one marquee roof that got blown away!! It could have been worse!
The Irish seem to race no matter what! Undeterred, they dispensed with the chases as that track was really water-logged but went ahead with the hurdles and flat races. First race 5.0 pm. The horses and jockeys were mud soaked but still had large crowds there to cheer them home!
The awful weather continued on our journey back. It had been a hard ,fruitless week but at this point we were looking forward to Badminton Horse Trials this week.
April 30th
We were given the bad news at 10 am that Badminton was cancelled. The dreadful weather that had hit us in Ireland is now wreaking havoc in the south leaving the organisers no option but to abandon any hope of the competition going ahead.
The competitors will have trained all last year for this event but no one would like to see horses risking injury over those big ,solid obstacles.
For Traders , like ourselves, it makes things very hard. Badminton would be one of our major events and therefore we all “stock up” for the occasion. The proceeds help “oil the wheels” and we love to catch up with friends and customers.
For the first time ever I’ve decided to have a SALE! So do look on our website in the next few days for offers!!