Once again, awake early and struggle to life as the rest of the
riders come to QPA and give us the stories of their evenings. Ho Ho! Who was it
came back at 3.00a.m? Hmmm! Who got lost on the way back from the restaurant to
the Hotel? (Technical note. From the Hotel you can see the restaurant. And Vice
Versa. Ho Hum - mustha been a good evening!)
Paloma is now out of action (not seriously), so Lisette and I
await Becky's new horses with anticipation. She had had to disappear rapidly as
she was having them shod the previous day to make sure they were up for it.
Finally Becky arrives and there they are - a lovely young mare Ballet,
(must be at least ¾ Lusitano if not pure-bred) for Lisette as she's a
good and light rider and for me, Patch! Er well, at first sight I'm not quite
too sure about this 14hh orange thingy, but by dint of a fair amount of elbow
grease, what we find underneath is a jolly good little skewbald mare.
Hooray - a horse that stands still and allows me to get aboard from the
ground - more later! And, if there was ever really a Gypsy Vanner in the world
- here she was! Great! Those gypsies weren't idiots when it came to horses!
Meanwhile Elaine has been given the great honour of being allowed to
ride Leo, who is one of QPA's top event horses - and can't you just tell! Snort
etc! And that's just Elaine!
Off we go down the drive with as usual a
certain amount of chaos as there always seems to be somebody who has forgotten
something (including to get on their horse!), accompanied by Max the wanderer
amongst the QPA dogs. John joins in the fun with Tony & Karen on their
trusty bikes and off we go! Mounted are Hugh (Becky's other half) and Jade
riding Ben and Jeremy's horses as the curse of the Donkey Man on the previous
day had seriously put the golfing bit of the holiday in jeopardy.
Aha!
Fresh horses indeed for some of us! Elaine has fun with Leo (who it appears
hasn't been out on a hack like this for a while! Results as one would expect!),
Ballet seems to be permanently stuck to Patch's side as they are great friends,
but both are off at some kind of pace. Finally I work out - with Patch's little
legs I can actually convert her jog to a Western pace and sit quite happily at
that rate, and when trotting she storms along, but, being small, one can canter
smoothly to keep pace with the bigger horses!
Think I'm going to enjoy
the day, when
.. The curse of the Donkey man strikes again! This time TWO
donkeys join the ride! Luckily Jinny has come along to find where Max has got
to and leads the donkeys to safety and rounds up Max too!
Then off we go down the river valley which is really nice, and
find that the Film Crew have been marking the trail, in a most imaginative
manner, using toothpaste on rocks to indicate where the route goes! Not sure
who washed them off to prevent the cyclists from seeing them, or if it was
actually THE SUNSHINE that dried them out and they fell off! We waited at this
point and listened to goat bells as the farmer moved his flock. And we were
glad Max wasn't with us as the farmer's dogs were seriously large and might
have done Max a fair amount of damage. And they didn't bark. Which is far
scarier than the ones that do. Might be Iberian wolves we go - brrrrrr!
No water in the river and a bit of a hmmm where to refresh the
horses, when, "Hola!" A grizzled old chap is lurking under some trees filling
what turns out to be a large number of dead refrigerators and freezers, lying
doorless on their backs with cool water! "And if you think I'm going anywhere
near those scary things, think again!" Is what the horses say! But slowly they
get the idea and great slurps are soon heard all along the line! Fascinating!
Time to going upwards o'er hill and dale with nice set-up shots for the
camera with Elaine flying by as Ballet & Patch cantered nicely along
together. We could always tell where Elaine was by the sound of thundering
hooves from behind us or flying hair from in front as she'd abandoned hats and
appeared to be setting off down the "Lady Godiva" route.
Then, by crafty use of a shortcut Rod leads most of the ride
in front of the lead horses including Lady & Patch, which niggles Lady no
end and she hitches her back-end at Patch - who being Gypsy stock, gets out of
the way so fast that no contact is made. If you know the bit in the Roadrunner
Cartoons when Wile. E. Coyote finds himself over a long drop with no visible
means of support? Got it! Patch and I fell into a ditch and her legs folded
underneath her. Hmmm? Best be off her back, so I roll into the scrub - upwards!
Setting a new record of minus 12 inches in a fall. Patch sorts her legs out,
yanks the rein out of my hand and sets off across the scrub! Luckily Zoe leaps
to the rescue and soon we are all safely back on the trail, if a trifle muddied
from the bottom of the ditch - no damage is done - tough little things these
Vanners!
Then onwards towards the windmill farm, which Rod had pointed
out from what seemed like 100kms away - giants indeed but all stationary as
there was little or no wind. As we went up and down the rises we could see them
getting closer and closer and slowly more and more of them started to turn.
Then - up to the top and the most marvellous cantering along towards the
windmills.
At this point I felt like asking Mike if he had a lance handy as
although Lady could not in any way be described as Rosinante, alongside those
two I felt distinctly like Sancho Panza on Amadis. (Note - I'm still not sure
that's the correct name for Sancho's Donkey - but I got it off the Internet so
it must be right?)
Not helped by Tony, one of the Camera crew who had
decided to join the fun to make sure all original riders hit the end spot,
appearing suddenly and a fair old rate but at 90 degrees to the rest of us!
Mad! But the overall magic of nearing the end was getting to us, I think.
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