Nights are drawing in. It is almost too dark to ride up the lane after work. Only Daniel’s white face was visible in the gathering gloom as he and Steve trotted back under the trees and over the canal bridge late last week.

With the autumn tints has come a seasonal flurry of Daniel’s old enemies – the pheasants.

“Flippin’ ’eck, I could ‘ave skwashed that ’un,” he said, leaping a scuttling bird as he cantered up the cross-country field at dusk.

Minutes earlier, a terrified Daniel left Steve clinging round his neck when a pheasant shot out from under a log as the pair approached to jump it.

Much of the talk at the yard is about this Sunday’s Coniston Hunter Trials. The Bannister family open up their magnificent grounds once a year to host an event that sees dozens of horses jumping the exciting cross-country course around the ornamental lake. Sunday saw Steve and Daniel practising with Lisa and Joseph at Craven Country Ride for the Coniston Pairs class.

“Come on, little man. You’ll have to keep up if we are going to get a prize,” said Joseph, a big, rangy, chap who eats up the ground.

“Not you an’ all,” puffed Daniel, drifting into Joseph’s slipstream to follow him over a line of challenging brush fences. “’Ere’s a bloke givin’ ’is all and folks still want somert better.”

Steve’s gentle rebuke that Daniel could have tackled a recent hunter trials with a bit more energy had clearly hurt the little chap’s feelings. Even so, Steve was thrilled to jump the daunting palisade for the first time on Sunday, along with skinny barrels and log, the new trakehner and a black pipe fence.

Esme and Mrs Horse soared over a series of formidable fences in preparation for the Open class at Coniston.

And Baby came too. With the trailer hitched, Steve knocked tentatively on the Boss’s office door. “Can you spare us a few minutes for your favourite pastime?” he asked.

The Boss groaned and banged his head several times on his computer at the prospect of hefting Baby up the ramp. As he bore down determinedly on the wagon park, an all-too familiar ginger head stared at him from the trailer. “Hi, I’m going for an outing,” said Baby who amazed us all by clomping almost straight in.

The Land Rover, which was off the road last week after breaking down yet again, has become an unlikely saviour.

After returning once more from the garage on Friday, its knitted wiring having been unravelled, it was called on by the Boss to fetch straw bales after the gearbox on his Land Rover seized.

We are hoping it will manage to get us to Coniston before it packs up again.

Jenny Loweth & Steve Wright