Perfect!

Well, today has been perfection.  Everything one would want from a day.  Almost unbroken sunshine with just a few white clouds in the sky on and off; very warm but not unpleasantly hot (although I think that it might seem very hot during the coming night) and basically it's the type of day that we spend eleven and a half months of the year dreaming about.

So, now that we have at last got perfect weather, let's hope that it lasts a while.  Of course, the problem I have for this blog is that, while the weather has been great, it's not much of a story - and yet it's been the story of the day.  And I've taken some lovely good-weather photographs and I'd like to put them up - but how to get enough text to pad things out around them?

Well, I might just run through the day.  It's been an unremarkable Saturday.  We've 19 horses here, of which 14 were ridden today.  At any time, you'll probably find a handful having a day or two off, either for having just run (Zarosa) or having had some treatment from Carol the back-lady, or just generally having a break, either short or long for some reason or another.  Of the 14 who were ridden, one walked, nine cantered and four galloped (two of them individually and two of them - Roy and Many Levels - as a pair).  And all went well.

And the one thing which they all had in common was that they all, like the people, were able to revel in the sunshine, as one can see from this photograph of the Smart Strike colt and Gus each enjoying a brahma in his own particular way.  The unlikely bonus which some of the horses had to top off a perfect summer's day was a good feed of grass.  This ought not to be the case as perfect weather isn't great for grass-growing, but of course this is perfect weather at the end of months and months of rain and rain and rain.

The upshot of all that summer rain is that the field which is shut off for the summer hasn't just grown a covering of grass: it's grown a fair dinkum forest of grass.  Ordinarily this field would be shut until we resume using it late in the autumn, but as the grass is so plentiful and so lush in it, it seemed sensible to use the field sparingly over the next week or two, because it would be sad to see this grass wither and die uneaten.  Anyway, the afternoon shift of field horses (ie the ones who are doing plenty of work) had a real treat, as you can see with Ethics Girl,  Batgirl and co happily stuffing their faces.

So that was the day that was.  I hardly dare look at the forecast for fear of discovering that this perfect weather is only set to last another 24 hours, which on past form might well be the case.  However, it could last longer - we're certainly due some settled high pressure - so let's hope that it will.  Tomorrow I am sure will be very similar, and let's hope that it continues through the week.  It won't be great for running horses other than ones which like fast ground, but that's a small price to pay - and the other horses have had more than their share of good ground or softer over the 'summer' so far.  And, of course, as the trip to the heavy track at Chepstow on Thursday emphasised, East Anglian weather isn't necessarily spread all over the British Isles - witness Tramore being off through water-logging yesterday.

We won't have any runners this coming week - Batgirl, for instance, was one of two entries at Yarmouth on Tuesday, but it's an easy decision not to run her when the ground is fast - but there's no harm in that in a week of very hot and dry weather.  She, incidentally, is in the foreground in the penultimate photograph of the chapter, ridden by Hannah, who is also in the chapter's final shot, which shows Roy walking perkily back from Racecourse Side from his gallop on the Cambridge Road all-weather.  As you can see from this shot and the other ones, today's conditions really are very good for both man and beast.