Horse Riding and Biking

Elspeth, Les, I know we planned to go to a cattle ranch and learn to ride horses in Australia on honeymoon, and I know that what you gave us for a wedding present. Well we got a bit sidetracked on honey moon. But nearly 3 years later we’ve finally managed to use you present. Thanks, it was wicked.

We arrived and a Spanish only speaking Gaucho saddled up the biggest horse in the place and then judging, rightly, that we hadn’t a clue, gave us the two smallest. So we set off, and all was going well as we headed down the road out of town. Then my (Phil’s) horse stopped. He didn’t want to go for a walk and turned around and started walking home. I pulled on the reins and kicked him in the side, I cursed him and turned him round a number of times. All I achieved was to make him turn from one side of the road to the other and eat the grass verge on either side. I was beginning to feel a little foolish when I spotted Vicky and the Gaucho riding back to help, Vicky was laughing so hard she could barely keep her seat on her very well behaved horse.

Gaucho informed me with some unintelligible Spanish, some ‘kick the horse’ sign language and a look that said ‘you’re an idiot’ that:

1 I needed to show the horse who was boss.
2 I was an idiot.

Humbling.

Anyway, after kicking the horse as hard as I could, he consented to travel the 100m to the first stream where he refused to cross. I kicked as hard as I could with my cushioned trainers and won a brief respite from the grass eating from my horse, but it wouldn’t cross the river. Outsmarted by a horse. Vicky wasn’t chuckling this time, the whole top of her head had flipped back on a big hinge and she was struggling for breath while letting out one long continuous skyward directed laugh. The Gaucho, having had enough, rode back across the river and whipped my horse until it cantered across the river and halfway across the next field. It behaved itself after that.

We rode up through rivers and grassland to a big waterfall sat around in the sun for an hour to rest and then headed back. The horses got up to their bellies in a river and Vicky’s decided to have a splash about for a while, thrashing first one front leg, then the other in the river. The Gaucho and I were loving it and laughing. Vicky, unable to tell if the horse was panicking, or having fun, and rather too sore to have a horse jump around under her was not looking happy. The Gaucho got us cantering along on the way home, which was loads of fun, though I can now tell you that one of the fastest ways to make someone stand up in the saddle and cry is to have him trap a cahona between saddle heading up and himself heading down.

Still, Lots of fun, We went mountain biking the next day. I was ok, but Vicky was walking like John Wayne afterwards.