Ride Report: Elephant Rock - When 32km Feels Like 100
- Bella Fricker
- Aug 1
- 8 min read
If you’ve ever underestimated a ride based on the distance alone… you’re not alone. I decided back in January that 2025 was going to be my year to explore new rides — to break out of the flatlands I train on at home and push myself and the horses in new ways. What better place to test that than the wild, undulating moorland of Cornwall?
Spoiler alert: 32km has never hit quite so hard.
When we collected our Dalmatian puppy, Rita, from Cornwall earlier this year, I had the idea to tie a South West ride in with a return visit. And if you know me at all, you’ll know I don’t need much convincing to tie three different things into one mega logistical challenge.
family time with my non-horsey nanny in Dorset
a Rita litter reunion in Cornwall
and an endurance ride at Elephant Rock on Sunday 27th July.
I planned the trip backwards from there. A few days in Dorset visiting my non-horsey nanny, then down to Cornwall. I posted in a couple of Facebook groups and sorted accommodation for both horses and humans. Huge thanks to Sarah and Tristan Bishop for letting us stay at their place just 12 minutes from the venue. Their daughter Saffron kindly offered to ride Raine — she’s lighter than me and a brilliant rider, so it made total sense.
32km or 40km?
I’d ummed and ahhed about whether to enter the 32km or 40km. The 40km is technically the first qualifying distance for future FEI rides — but with unknown terrain and a young horse, it felt a bit ambitious. I entered the 40km anyway thinking, “Well, you can always downgrade on the day.” Good job too.
When the ride details were finally published on the Endurance GB site (3 days before the ride), I realised… there was no crewing allowed on course. Not something that had been advertised beforehand. Honestly, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have entered — especially not with a second-time novice horse who colicked (mildly, thankfully) after her last ride. But it was the Thursday before the ride, we were already in Dorset, and we were committed.
Plotting the route onto my OS app was a mission in itself — no bridleways or field margins like we’re used to. Just moor. Beautiful but brutal. And yes, hilly. Very hilly.
Between that, the no crewing, and a general sense that I might’ve bitten off more than I could chew, I happily downgraded to the 32km. And thank god I did.
Hoof boot saga never ends
I’m still battling the hoof boot situation but this time with Raine, not Chip. I really like the Explora hoof boots for endurance but she is between sizes for her front feet at the moment. Currently I am making do with Flex for her front feet and she's getting on fine with Exploras on the hinds. However the flex don’t offer so much structural support and they can twist which isn’t ideal. The plan was to boot for the first 5km on stony tracks, then whip them off when we passed back through the venue before heading out over the moor.
Chip, meanwhile, was a total boot pro in his Exploras (after all these years of trial and error). Four feet, zero drama, handled the terrain like a champ — water crossings, hills, whatever we threw at them.
The ride
The ride started off on the flatter ground through some woods, which was a nice warm-up. Once back through the venue, Raine had a drink, Chip munched grass, Raine's boots were taken off, and then the climbing began. And didn’t stop. At all. Ever.
The scenery was stunning — wide open moorland, ponies, cattle, sheep — but the hills were relentless.
The Mental Load of Riding Two
And here’s where I’ll admit I completely underestimated how hard this ride was going to be.
Physically, yes. But also mentally. Trying to navigate, lead, ride, keep both horses safe, make water stops count, all while keeping the pace high enough… it took it out of me.
But more than that, I felt the full weight of responsibility. Even though I was riding Chip and had absolute faith in Saffron riding Raine, it was still a huge emotional load having one of my horses ridden by someone else. It’s something I’ve never done before — I’ve competed 30+ different horses in my time, but never had anyone else ride one of my own in competition.
Raine is still only six, and I know her inside and out. I knew how hard that course was going to be on her — with so many 'firsts' — and not being the one in the saddle made it so much harder to gauge in the moment how she was really coping. I was trying to look after Chip while constantly checking back over my shoulder for Raine. Was she okay? Was she stressed? Was she pushing too hard or not enough? Was she drinking? Was Saffron alright too?
It was just a lot.
Challenging Ground and Pace Pressure
The grass coverage was great and it made a nice change to have some give in the ground compared to the concrete clay we have at home but on the same note I never like to do more than walk on ground where I can’t see where my horses are putting their feet. But it wasn’t possible to do that here otherwise we would have never made it round in time.
Minimum speed for a Novice horse at Endurance GB rides is 8kmph and this goes up to 10kmph for Open and Advanced combinations. Luckily I had entered Chip into the novice class so that we wouldn’t have to worry about minimum speed – or so I thought.
I truly wasn’t expecting the hills to be so steep or so big! Saffron who lives and trains there said they really weren’t using the best tracks or routes either. Rather than going with the contours, we were taking the steep route directly up and down again.
I lost count of how many times I got on and off to take the load off the horses. They found down hills just as challenging as they’re not used to balancing themselves (+ riders) down such descents.
The marking was also a bit questionable and I was really lucky to have Saffron otherwise I genuinely would have got lost several times over. It was so hard to find the next flag in such wide open terrain and there were multiple points where you could see flags in all directions as they were close together for in and outbound routes and whilst I think I have a good sense of direction generally, even I was disoriented by the vastness of it all.
Not to mention the fact that since there was no crewing on course we couldn’t’ have a drink ourselves so dehydration, as well as some mild hysteria by the sheer intensity of the course, was definitely setting in.
I also got off at every check point where they had communal water to crew the horses. Frustratingly 2 or the 3 places didn’t have small water buckets for the horses and Raine wasn’t confident to go up to the big buckets to have a drink.
Especially frustrating knowing that she drank at every opportunity at her last endurance ride. The final check point that had water (maybe 4km from the finish) had the small buckets that we could raise up to their faces and Raine and Chip both drank 2 full buckets each!!
Watergate
By now I'm sure you are sensing my feeling of despair and tiredness, and that's when princess Raine's tiara slipped off and she refused to go through the final water crossing. She had gone through the other water crossings without hesitation but this time it was a 'hard no'. Despite everything we were comfortably travelling at 10kmph average but our speed took a serious hit when Raine simply wouldn't contemplate getting her feet wet one last time.
After 20 minutes and a serious concern that we were going to have to retire on course and somehow work out how to get picked up - Saffron knew of a long way round. This was another 500m away from home to another water crossing - this one deeper and longer but a more inviting entrance. Thank goodness Raine went through this time but we then had to ride another 500m to get back onto the course. We probably lost 30mins in all!
If I hadn't been with Saffron I don't know what we'd have done as I certainly didn't know of the alternative and I didn't have any phone reception at that spot either.
A Dramatic Finale
By the last hill, we were once again walking in hand. I text Keaton saying we’d be 15 mins to get back into the venue. His reply: “You’ve got 6 minutes to make your time.”
Panic. We got back on, trotted where we could, picked our way through a rocky descent, cantered the last field, and somehow — somehow — got in with a minute to spare.
Crossing the line, my Garmin measured out at 35km too! Allowing for our own extra km ridden it was long which is always frustrating when the speed you've been riding to on your wrist doesn't match that on paper.
Final vetting, recovering and results
Since I’ve never cared about grades and we wouldn’t be getting one anyway due to going so slowly we washed the horses off and went straight to vetting. We allowed the horses to tuck into their Perform & Restore Mash whilst we washed them off too as they were both so hungry.
I was so thrilled to see how marvellously sound and happy they both looked at the vetting. Chip’s HR was 41 and Raine’s was 53.
The saving grace on the day had been that it wasn't too hot!
After vetting I kept a very close eye on Raine as this is when she had her colicky moment at Well Vale but I am very happy to report she truly looked perfect. Both horses ate and drank and chilled out whilst we sorted the onerous task of putting everything away again.
Meanwhile I drank two bottles of water, a full-fat coke, and even had a sausage bap from the burger van (unheard of for me post-ride). I was so incredibly grateful that we had planned to stay the night as it took me several hours to feel normal again. 32km has never felt so tough.
Can we talk ride ratings?
It’s got me thinking — we need a difficulty rating system for endurance rides. Like British Cycling’s grade 1–5 based on elevation. It’s ludicrous that this 32km counts the same as a 32km on a flat route like at King’s Forest, Euston Park, or actually any rides within a 2hr radius of home. Even if that's not possible, if ride organisers could publish the elevation gain in the ride information on the ride website it would be a huge help — no one’s arguing with a GPS file!
I’m so proud of both horses. Raine is just six and held her own on that wild moorland. Chip proved (yet again) why he’s worth his weight in gold. I’m glad I didn’t push for the 40km and instead made decisions that set us up for success.
Our next ride is somewhere a little more familiar — so I can go back to moaning about rock-hard ground instead of surprise mountain climbs.
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Let me know if you’ve ever done a ride that totally surprised you — I’d love to compare notes (and elevation stats 🙀).
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