While riding a few days ago one of my girth straps snapped. Luckily this was quote undramatic and to be honest I didn’t even notice until I got off. Amanda’s girth snapped completely while she was show jumping and she broke her collar bone 
so I was very pleased that all saddles have two girth straps and the second strap survived.
However, I didn’t want to push my luck and continue to ride with one girth strap so I needed the snapped girth strap replacing quickly. I do have another saddle that fits Razz but it is an old jumping saddle so I only use it for hacking. My dressage saddle is an Albion SLK and the girth straps are leather but they are stitched to webbing which is easily accessible by just lifting the saddle flap up. 
So it looked like a very simple repair but a bit beyond my own sewing kit which is OK to put a button back on a shirt 
Maurice Emtage of Colne Saddlery has been my saddler for years so I phoned up Colne Saddlery to see how quickly it could be repaired. The Colne Saddlery shop asked me to phone the workshop to see if a quick “while you wait repair” could be organised. Unfortunately, there was no saddler available until the following day but they agreed that it could be fixed while I waited if I could take the saddle to the workshop at Kineton.
The following morning I set the SatNav for Kineton and set off. I know that Kineton is near Cotswold Trailers so I didn’t need the SatNav until the last few miles when I was surprised to see that I was still almost 30 miles away from Kineton. I knew this was wrong so I ignored SatNav and got the old fashioned paper map out and managed to find Kineton. I later discovered that there is also a Kineton in Warwickshire and I had picked the wrong one when I set the route in the SatNav
Maurice’s colleague Rob was available and stitched a new girth strap on in a few minutes. The cost of the repair was minimal … the diesel to get to Kineton cost a lot more !
