This weekend saw Wash Warriors on Tour travelling to Scotland to race with Flying Scots at Errol. We travelled up on Friday, meeting up with Sue and Sheena at around 8am for breakfast and then stopping for lunch at a beach in Northumberland just north of Berwick on Tweed, letting the dogs out for a short run on the beach to stretch their legs. We were not camping this weekend, deciding to treat ourselves to a proper bed for the next few nights and we found our hotel not much more than 15 minutes away from the venue. This place left a little bit to be desired but as we were not going to be in it for long we put up with it.
Saturday saw us up early searching in the dark for the old airfield. Wow - what a venue - a great hangar awaited us with parking under cover too and a bakers on site! Tina was measuring today and so was busy from the time we arrived. Not only were we racing Viking Warriors in a 6 team division but we also had Zarah and Bella racing with 2 different little league teams with Zarah handled by Tina and Bella handled by Chris. We were also helping Spanish Rapidz during the day with Julia box loading for them.
What can I say to an amazing days racing on our first trip up to Scotland as a club.
Zarah raced with StarPaws and came second (behaving brilliantly during the day) ...... she was pipped to the post and first place by her granny Bella, old timer Flyball dog, who raced with Pavillion and had a wonderful time. The grin on her face when she was lining up was brilliant and she certainly didn't want to let go of her tug - pulling Chris all around the back of the ring in the process!
Viking Warriors - our indoor league team - again were outstanding. We thought we were a bit outclassed in this division being seeded 6th and races were hard won today. We lost the first 5 heats to Cambs Cannons who fielded some fast dogs in their team and we knew from the start that we had no hope of taking any legs off them unless they made mistakes. However we only hit another new seed time of 19.40s - with room - on the first heat of the day. We did not get times for the second race against Flying Scots Toe rags but took 2 heats off them. The 3rd race against Pavillion we managed to take all 4 heats with steady times in the 20 secs, and also took 2 heats off Streamlined to Infinity. The final race against Dundee Dynamuts was tight but we managed to take 3 heats with the dogs slowing slightly. So we ended up with 11 heats out of the 20 possible.
Sheena ran steadily all day - as she always does. Charly was his usual steady self again averaging 5.59s during the day. Jack put in a 5.36s (which we believe is a pb for him as we don't think the 5.19 earlier in the year was correct) and averaged under 6s again. Millie was also steady today with her fastest time recorded as 4.13s.
So not having much confidence in our performance we only went and and pulled it out if the bag again coming home with a shocking second place. We really enjoyed ourselves today and felt that the dogs did themselves justice again.
We can’t thank Spanish Rapidz enough for all their help today we really appreciate it. We thoroughly enjoyed helping you too and your boxloader really enjoyed herself, Spanish Rapidz came home with first place!!
After our amazing day of Flyball, we then went off site seeing on Sunday Unfortunately the weather turned a bit this morning and was a bit drizzly however we didn't let that spoil our fun.
We first went to visit the Falkirk Wheel and took a boat ride up and back (via what we called the ferris wheel!!).
This was an item on Chris' bucket list so he can tick this off now! Our second stop was the Kelpies what an amazing piece of Artistry!
We then headed back down the coast to find the lovely beach we stopped at on the way up and letting our dogs have a well deserved run again after working so hard yesterday. We had one more overnight stop at an amazing pub - well above the standard we had had for the last 2 nights with beautiful rooms and amazing food.
Monday morning saw us having a lovely cooked breakfast before heading on the final few hours journey home. What an amazing weekend for the club.