Northern riding
May. 27th, 2007 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
When I announced last night where I had booked to go horseriding this morning, I was told we'd tried the stable before when we first moved to the area, and that it wasn't very good. The description was, "A muddy field full of scraggly shetland ponies."
I got lost on the way, but eventually turned into the correct road and was presented with - a muddy field full of scraggly shetland ponies. The signs were not good.
The fact that the girl who took my booking did not check my height or weight became a problem when they put me on a beautiful strawberry roan pony called Millie, who was patently too small for me. When I'd adjusted the stirrups, my feet were half way to the poor beast's knees. As I directed her towards the gate, where the other horses were gathered, she danced in a circle and raised her hind quarters as if preparing to buck me off. The signs were getting worse.
For the first ten minutes of the ride (entirely on roads), Millie jumped violently every time I gave her a signal, and I was beginning to wonder just what kind of stable I'd arrived at. However, light hands and a light seat calmed her down quite quickly and she turned out to be a lovely ride - very responsive and extremely willing. The latter was an important quality, since she was really struggling with the hills by the time we'd got half way - the stable girl leading the ride accused her of being lazy but I found her continued efforts at lugging my weight quite valiant. We kept getting left behind, but I didn't really care about that and I mostly let her go at her own pace, only keeping her in trot longer than everyone else to make sure we didn't lose sight of them.
The mad gallop in the woods wasn't Windsor Great Park (but what could be?) but I'd forgotten how much fun it can be to ride a pony at full pelt. I was just a bit worried the poor thing would collapse before we reached the end. Fortunately, we made it back in one piece, only a couple of minutes behind everyone else.
All in all, a pretty good hack.