NEXT time you don’t just quite feel like tacking up and getting out there to compete, take a leaf out of Madelaine Gervais’s book. The well-known Waterford horsewoman and her merry crew recently returned home after a marathon 5,000km journey to compete in show jumping in Cagnes sur Mer and Barcelona.

Gervais and her assistant Cindy packed up her show jumping horse Pepper Pot and their 13.2hh Connemara pony, Ballydavid Out Of The Mist, and drove across England where they had to wait two days in Dover before the sea calmed down enough to take the boat over to France.