Royal Highland Show 2017 - #1 Ridden Highlands and Broken Cameras

 As I said in my previous post, I travelled to the RHS this year with two companions, my friends, Tomás and Rory who had come up specially!

We rose early (well, for me anyway!) on Friday to go to the show. The bus into town was a little late, but the Edinburgh ones leaving the depot were very regular and after missing one as the baguette I'd chosen to buy for lunch later apparently had to be toasted first, another arrived a few minutes later.

The forecast was for rain until midday, then cloud and sunny spells for the rest of the day.

The rain showed itself within a few minutes of setting off but we hoped it'd pass over quickly.

I texted my other hobby friend Magda, who I've been to the show with before, and arranged to meet up once we got there around 10:30. We headed for the main ring and ogled the Highlands for a few minutes, then I got my camera out to take some photos.

...only, it wouldn't take them.

Nigel was...broken.

He started up fine, all the settings were normal but every time I pressed the shutter, nothing happened, though it would occasionally fire if I held it down long enough.

To say I was devastated was putting it mildly, I was raging.

I defeatedly took some photos with my iPhone instead, knowing that I had about 2GB of space on it, and that was all. It was all horribly reminiscent of the first Model Horse Love Live show, where Nigel had died completely within the first hour, and I'd be damned if it happened again.

After much grumbling, we met up with Magda (who'd got lost in amongst the tractors - very easily done I might add!) and I poured out my woes, even trying out her camera's lens in case that was the issue. It wasn't, apparently, but after a lot of foutering about and determinedly holding down the shutter enough I was able to get it functioning again, although I'm pretty sure this will be Nigel's last big outing. I've been thinking about getting a new camera for months now, as he'll be 10 next year(!) and I really want to upgrade to something which shoots video.

He still got obstinately stuck every now and again throughout the day, and overall I don't think the quality of my usual photographs is there, as I'd spend so long just trying to get any photos that I didn't take the time to compose my shots, but never mind.

 

While the rain had stopped after a couple of minutes of us arriving, there was still a pretty strong breeze and it was setting ponies off left, right and centre.

 

I made some remark about how unusual it was to see a Highland spook, as they're normally so unflappable and some old farmer a few feet away said ‘If you knew anything about horses you’d know that they were spooked by that big umbrella over there’ and we were just like 😒 thanks for that, random man, we'd never have guessed by ourselves.

According to someone on a Highland Pony group on Facebook there were 34 entries, which is pretty enormous for a ridden class, so it was no surprise that there seemed to be Highlands strutting their stuff in that ring for hours.

As per usual I'll split each blog post by topic, so next up will be the Welshies!