Set Fire To The Rein - getting to know Adele

Hi everyone!

I'm Adele from Set Fire To The Rein on Instagram and I am Apt Cavaliers brand new supported rider for 2020. What a fantastic year to represent a brand at competition eh?

Regardless of lockdown and a complete halt on competition for a number of weeks it has been fantastic to be on board with the team at Apt Cavalier. I wanted to take this opportunity, whilst little is going on, to tell you all a little about myself and my horses.

I am from Kent in the south-east of England but have lived in London for three years now. Despite now living in London I still go to Kent every day as that is where my two horses, Louie and Marley, live.

Louie is a 12 year old Irish Sports horse by Ricardo Z, standing at 17.2h and built like a machine - he is a lot of horse! I have had him since he was 6 years old and he lives and breathes for eventing, mainly cross country. During our first season together we progressed from BE90 to Novice and then spent our 2nd season gaining our qualifications to compete at 1* (now 2*), with the aim to move up to intermediate when we had acquired the MERs necessary to move up. This dream was halted with injury and after many, many vet trips, investigations and surgery, we believed to have found the problem to be his SI (Sacroiliac joint).

Louie has spent the last 22 months rehabbing from the very beginnings going (slowly but rewardingly) from strength to strength. This season we were due to return to British Eventing for the first time since early 2018. Our aims are very different now and I would love to go out and just enjoy him at BE100. If that all goes well, maybe we could aim for Badminton Grassroots, or the new 1* so we can trot down the centre line in tails - wearing tails is an ultimate goal for me that, due to ordering too late, I didn't achieve in my 1* debut years prior.

My other horse is Marley, another 17.2h Irish Sports Horse gelding. I bought him as a 4-year-old standing at approximately 17h. Although I'm tall I didn't feel I needed to go quite as big as Louie this time, but he just kept on growing! The aim with Marley was again to event, but after two years of struggling to get him successfully around BE80s I have admitted defeat and decided to concentrate on Marley's dreams of being an arena ballerina. From the day I viewed Marley I knew he had wonderful paces and he actually lead after dressage for the majority of our BE career, but sadly he didn't tend to hold that lead into jumping. One autumnal day at Aston Le Walls he managed to maintain the lead after a very backwards but clear show jumping, only to refuse to go past the geese on the lake on route to fence 3 on the cross country course! He is full of scope with the ability to make the time, but Marley just doesn't enjoy jumping at competitions which is why I decided to give BD a go.

Towards the end of 2019 we got to a few competitions and were competitive at Elementary so I was aiming to move up to medium this year. However, with storms, equine flu and now COVID-19 we have only one competition under our belt this year so far. As things seem to be easing and we have been able to commence training again we are hoping to be back out in the next month or two.

My horses are currently at my Dad's house causing havoc and getting me in trouble (Marley recently ate some of the roof of my Dad's car!), but we are looking forward to moving to a livery yard slightly closer to my London home. This will allow me a bit more freedom with competitions, training and, of course, visiting the Apt Cavalier team in Scotland, I'm excited to see what the second half of 2020 brings!

Thanks for reading, 

Adele 

You can follow Adele's journey on Instagram by clicking here and Facebook by clicking here