It’s been twice in the last four months that I have seen the sites of Romsey in Victoria. They seem to be cold, dry and sometimes windy, those type of breezes that just go straight through you, too lazy to go around you… and dry, did I say dry, in the horse paddocks, the grass is long and appears plenty of it, but almost a light brown to grey colour. But yet the horses all look very well, especially two lovely Thoroughbreds, Tosca and Peg.

Iris and Tosca at their place in Romsey at dusk, 2014

This is the place where ‘Iris’ lives… For way over 10 years now Iris has sponsored me by completely looking after the Sally Evans Dressage site. She not only puts up all the updates, but Iris has totally designed the site right from scratch. Any time day or night I will email through more results or pictures to be posted and within a day it’s there!!! Today this site is amazing!!! I just love it.

I mentioned twice I have visited Iris in the last few months. In December of 2014, Sue and I fly down to stay with Iris, and this was for me to attend and sit my B level dressage judges accreditation. And for this exam, I needed a person to write for me, in every single movement of 25 movements for 26 horses for this exam at Werribee. That is 650 comments…!!! That’s quite a lot of hand writing to do. Iris said, “ oh yeah, I’ll do it for you Sally”, and I said, “do you know what you’re going to be doing? It’s going to be full on, horse after horse and I need to put a comment in for every single movement for each test”, “ I can do it “. And I have to admit, that Iris was terrific, so efficient and kept right up with me and all the things you have to comment and say, she gave me confidence. I passed my exam!! I highly recommend Iris for any further writing!!! So for the 3 days we were there, Iris looked after us and shared her wonderful Vegan cooking with us and we met Tosca, her ex-racehorse, who she is training for dressage. And he is a sweetie too.

Iris and Peter at Inglis Thoroughbred Sales at Oaklands, March 2015

Then just last weekend, Peter and I went to the Inglis Tried Racehorse sale at Oaklands, Melbourne. We were going to buy a new racehorse for ourselves to train, but the 2 that we really liked were sold for just out of our budget range. And we were very obedient to our exact type of horse that we wished to have, cause really we could have easily bought home a couple of them.

Peter and Iris with Tosca at their place in Romsey, March 2015

And this trip Peter had the time to share with Iris and her horses feeding them, changing rugs, as they are both very spoilt horses. And we enjoyed some lovely home cooked meals in the gorgeous almost European picturesque cottage.

THANKS IRIS so much, you’ve been a wonderful supporter of me and my horses and my riding over so many years, and I really appreciate all the enormous time you have spent on the site, or being at events or at home and taking beautiful photographs of our horses.

Iris taken a photograph of Basil and I in the mirror at our place, July 2010