After what has felt like an endless summer of blue skies, blazing sunshine and very little rain, it was probably inevitable that the weather would change just in time for the last Bank Holiday of the summer!
And so, with slightly greyer skies overhead, we’re back at Weston Lawns Equestrian Centre for the August Bank Holiday Bonanza — four huge days of show jumping and one of the busiest events on the calendar.
It also marks something of a milestone in our summer, as the Bank Holiday Bonanza is the last of the big show jumping events at Weston Lawns for the summer season. After a packed few months of photographing horses and riders here, it always feels a little strange to reach this point in the calendar. There’s still plenty of action to come, of course, but this weekend does have that end-of-summer feeling about it.
More than 250 riders took part on the first day alone, with action taking place across both arenas. That makes for some mammoth days for riders, organisers and, of course, the photographers trying to make sure we capture as much of the action as possible.
The good news is that the big yellow photo bus is back and open for business for all four days of the show.
The first day started off well enough weather-wise, but by the middle of the afternoon, things had certainly changed. As Queen famously put it: “Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening!” And boy, did it rain!
Hats off to every rider who competed in such awful conditions, and a huge thank-you to the incredible arena party, who stayed out there through it all, picking up knocked poles and keeping the competition moving. It was a truly heroic effort in some thoroughly miserable weather.
Competitors can pop onto the bus throughout the event to view their photographs from both arenas, with images arriving throughout the day. Whether you’re looking for that perfect jumping shot, a favourite round or simply want to see what we managed to capture, come aboard and have a look.
As usual, we’ll also be uploading photographs to our website every evening.
With such enormous numbers of competitors, though, there are rather a lot of photographs to work through! We’ll be processing and uploading them as quickly as we can, but please bear with us if your images don’t appear online immediately. With hundreds of riders competing each day, it takes a little while to get everything sorted, edited and uploaded.
If you’re at Weston Lawns over the Bank Holiday weekend, come and say hello on the big yellow bus and take a look at the photographs while you’re there.
Hopefully the weather will be kind to us — although after the summer we’ve had, we probably can’t complain too much if we finally have to dig out the waterproofs!