Equi-Trek Aldon International Horse Trials: Look Who's Back!

Andrew Nicholson and Zacarias Novice Dressage at Aldon Horse Trials

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Read on to find out how I set about capturing Andrew Nicholson's return to eventing competition at the Equi-Trek Aldon International Horse Trials.

Some things are just meant to be; it started when Tweseldown was cancelled and I decided to spend two days at Aldon instead of the one (Sunday) I'd originally planned. Then I decided to buy myself a laptop and an internet dongle to help with my video uploading. And of course there was Andrew Nicholson coming back from injury to ride a full string of horses over the weekend.

So the idea began to form in my mind that I should video Andrew's first dressage test. But not only that I should also upload directly from Aldon. The slight problem was that the first test was at 08;06 and Aldon is a good two hours away. But unperturbed I charged everything up, set the alarm for 4:00AM and packed my bags for an early start. I also did as much as I could with the video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro on the laptop before setting off so that all I have to do at Aldon was drop the video of the test into place. 

Charging the batteries the night before

The drive down the motorway was reasonably uneventful and even allowed time for a Costa. On arrival at Aldon I got my bearings, parked as near as I could to the dressage (which takes place on the Rugby Club pitches) assembled the camera and tripod and set off. As I walked to the arenas I said hello to Emily King and Tim Price before setting up to capture Andrew and Zacarias. Boy it was cold! Luckily Andrew was second on so I had chance to check I was standing by the correct arena.   

Cappuccino and a Tiffin (other coffee outlets are available)

With the video in the can it was back to The Discovery to transfer the file onto the Laptop. That all went smoothly and it was then time to make sure the last piece of the jig saw would fall into place, the 3G Internet speed! I pinged it and got a download speed of 8.31 Mbps and upload speed of 3.99 Mbps. Thank you Three! That's better than I get via BT Broadband at home so not bad for a field on the outskirts of Yeovil. The work I'd done the night before paid dividends and I was soon uploading and also enjoying an excellent cup of Kookaburra coffee.

Transferring from video camera to laptop 

Uploading via the Three Dongle
My Twitter caption was "using the Discovery as an expensive mouse mat"

The upload went smoothly and just about an hour after Andrew had finished his test it was on-line and being watched around the world. I was very pleased with the result and once I was sure it was running correctly I was off to video the novice cross country which was taking place that day.

In some respects I was fortunate because it was the first time I'd used the laptop in anger and I probably should have run through the whole exercise first to make sure I had all the links and software that I needed. As it turned out I did have and apart from the laptop taking longer to process the video than I expected everything went swimmingly.

Isn't technology marvellous!

You can see Andrew And Zacarias in action cross country in this video.