Sunday’s atrocious weather did nothing to deter Steve from the indoor hunter trials at Broomhill. He packed his cross-country colours and cleaned his boots as the rain teemed into the back yard at our cottage.

Esme couldn’t face hours of being soaked to the skin, but braved the downpour to ride up the lane with Jack. Daniel, whose stable is the middle one of the three, looked on with smug satisfaction as Mrs Horse and Baby ventured forth in waterproof blankets.

“Some folk ’ave more sense,” he said, little knowing that Steve was hitching up the trailer in the driving rain.

It all seemed a long way from Saturday’s peaceful autumn sunshine when we had our photo taken for the Diary’s new look.

“Are yer sure yer’ve got me in’t pitcher?” asked Daniel as the Herald’s award-winning photographer, Stephen Garnett, lined him up for the shot. “’Ave yer got me best side? I weren’t even on last time,” Daniel added. We searched in vain for him on the website after the Pairs class at Coniston Hunter Trials. Unfortunately, he was so far behind his partner we have no record of his steady, but largely solo, clear round.

By the time we had towed through great swathes of surface water on the A59 on Sunday, the wind was rising. We reached the last steep hill to Broomhill Equestrian Centre as the Land Rover started boiling. We limped into the parking area, bubbling and steaming.

It brought back painful memories of the sad demise of the Volvo almost 18 months earlier. Its last act was to tow Mrs Horse onto Silsden Showground in a cloud of smoke. We bought a reconditioned Land Rover Defender hoping this would never happen to us again.

Twelve fences were set out in the indoor arena, including plastic sacks and ‘water’ obstacles and a tricky arrowhead ‘skinny’. Last of all was a ‘ditch’ of shavings in front of a rustic rail.

Daniel trotted round clear until the final shavings ditch. Genuinely alarmed, he refused twice before hopping over to come sixth. In the bigger class he had one naughty stop and lazily took down the gate but, with only one clear round, his eight faults put him in fourth place. To come so high up the order was a first for Steve who was thrilled with his purple and green rosettes.

At Broomhill we learned of the recent death of Andrew who helped to run the show jumping competitions there. His kind encouragement over the years will be very sadly missed.

The Boss, as usual, came to our rescue, towing Daniel home safely through the gale. The head gasket’s gone on the Land Rover so it’s possibly the end of the road.