Spring has sprung

Finally looks like spring has arrived with some decent weather. Haven't been doing an awful lot with the horses recently, been busy with the 5x50 Challenge. I got a nice fundraiser's t-shirt from World Horse Welfare in the post today so I had to get out there with it on for a picture.....

Gandalf is still off ridden work so gets taken along for a drag most days. If he's really lucky he gets the SNO on the end of his lead rope, as he knows he can easily drag her across to the nearest patch of grass. She doesn't half tell him off for it though :-)

He can't be feeling as bad as he was though since this morning, when we put Sky and Kinna in the neighbour's field for a bit of grass before we went out, he ran off up the field bucking in protest at being left behind........the girls were very happy to see some green stuff.

 Not sure if I should let G have too much of it though, so he's restricted to a couple of hours a day to start with.

Also got a new fleece today with the forum logo on it, it's navy blue so those white horse hairs show up a treat!

The SNO is very determined......

Since I have been cycling a lot more this past week for the 5x50 Challenge than I usually do (like at all), Éowyn has decided she wants to do some too. Only slight problem was that she couldn't ride her little bike without stabilisers......

So a couple of days ago, she pestered her dad to help her.

....and last night, she got it!

So this morning she was up at 6 asking when we could go cycling........I thought it might be prudent to wait until the sun came up, but as soon as it got light, off we went. Not the fastest bike ride in the world, lots of wobbly bits as she's not too hot on steering, but she only ended up in the ditch twice, so not bad for a first effort ;-)

She managed a whole 4 kms too :-)

The 5x50 Challenge....

....started today. So basically, having signed up for this, I have to run, walk or cycle 5kms a day for 50 days. Sadly, riding doesn't count. Obviously I won't be running, I leave that to some lunatic I know......which brings me to the warm up for the challenge I had to do yesterday. Because said lunatic decided to run the Médoc Marathon. In 36 degree heat. Wearing plate armour......

...and we had to yomp round various vineyards to cheer him on. Ended up doing about 8kms which was more than enough for us! Some of the time I had to carry swords too. Gave the locals something to stare at.

More on the mad marathon man's experience here.

So after that, a little 6.5km cycle with my friend Sarah was easy this morning. Except that we decided to go off road for some of it......forgetting that the hunting season started today. After the first volley of shotgun fire which scared the crap out of me (good job I wans't on a horse)  we decided to make a LOT of noise until the men with guns had seen us. No idea what they were hunting, couldn't see any wildlife for miles around, but that could be due to the large number of flourescent hat wearing gun toting men stomping all over the countryside......