In April 2020 and in the interest of legacy I wrote a Wikipedia entry recording the thoughts and notable works of Harveywetdog. I admit I was ignorant of the rules concerning self promotion on Wikipedia and consequently my entry was correctly deleted and my account expunged from the system. As a result my original words and links were sadly lost but nevertheless here is a rewrite. Perhaps when I'm gone someone will be able to enter it onto Wikipedia as a fitting epitaph for my time on the Harveywetdog Project.
The wait is over and we're back outdoors eventing on grass. For my first trip of 2017 I took the Harveywetdog 4K camera to the first day of the spring Tweseldown event.
Under new ownership Tweseldown is going through a renaissance as an eventing venue. This gave me a lot of new exciting fences to video at and when this is coupled with warm bright spring sunshine and some our top horses and riders it can only lead to a host of brilliant videos for you to enjoy.
It's always disappointing to set out for an event on a work day because it means I'm going to get stuck in the same rush hour traffic jam as usual. But once the vagaries of Gloucester and Birdlip Hill were out the way it wasn't a bad run to Tweseldown.
Going to plan
My basic plan had been to have a quick whip round the BE100 cross country course and the concentrate on the 3 Open Intermediate Sections and finish with the Advanced Intermediate. Things generally went to plan and probably the only thing I missed out on was some Advanced Intermediate Dressage which I'd hope to squeeze in between the Open Intermediate cross country.
I probably should have payed greater attention to just who I was videoing because when I came to edit the videos I didn't actually have a complete course for any of the Open Intermediate Sections but with a bit of borrowing from the later Intermediate Sections the Section F video does show the whole course.
Not Going to Plan
Tweseldown was mostly an uneventful day for me. I don't remember any holds on course and there were hardly any run outs or refusals so although the course looked well up to height (especially the BE100!) it appeared designed to give people a chance to have a confidence building first run of the season. One piece of drama I was in the right place to capture was William Fox-Pitt and My Lucky Day taking a minute to get away from the start area watched by a crowd of adoring fans and accompanied by an oblivious announcer bigging William up as the horse performed Advanced dressage combined with airs above the ground.
One horse I was pleased to see out and about competing again was Gemma Tattersall's Arctic Soul. One of the new features of the course (or re-instated features) was the climb up the hill to the iconic Tweseldown control tower and then drop down to the Giant's Table at 19 on the Intermediate Course. Having videoed Arctic Soul at 5 and 6 I zipped across the course to catch them coming down the hill and jumping the table in style. When I came to post this piece of video as one of my early rushes I edited into super widescreen (21x9) and was really pleased with the dramatic result. I was able to produce a similar result with David Britnell and Continuity on the other side of the hill.
As there were only 15 Advanced Intermediate entries I knew I wouldn't get all the way round the course so decided to capture all the show jumping and then get over to the first water and video all the combinations on the out loop and the return loop. This worked reasonably well and there was only a couple of occasions when I had two horse in the two pools at the same time. It made for an exciting end to the day as I tried to listen out to who was where and when I would be able to video them. I was delighted that Pippa Funnell and Kitty King shared the link to my videos on their Social Media, it all helps as we climb towards the magic 1 million YouTube views.
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