The Great British Summer

When we told people we were moving back to the UK they all said "Why? The weather is terrible...."

But no, not this year. After a very mild winter with no snow at all, and me worrying about being able to fight my way through huge drifts on treacherous country lanes down to the horses in the Kangoo (which has been known to get stuck on nothing more than some wet grass), not a single flake. So much for my argument that we'll NEED a 4 x 4 here in the winter (which would incidentally be able to tow the horse trailer I haven't got yet either)......

And now, well, summer is here. We've had fabulous weather for weeks. Yes, the odd torrential downpour/thunderstorm, but apart from that wall to wall sunshine. And flies, ticks and mosquitoes.....but at least we didn't need to break out the fly masks back in April like we did in the Dordogne.

So the horses are having a bit of a holiday at the moment as it's just too warm to expect them to do much, and unlike in France, it's humid, which is yuk.

They don't seem to mind :-)

Unfortunately for Tari, the downpours mean too much grass, so she has to have a muzzle on most of the time. Doesn't stop her eating though ;-)

So normal service will resume when it's a bit cooler - and we haven't got to wrangle the NO who finished school today *sigh*

Scorchio!!

So this is how the weather has been for the last week and it looks like there's at least another week of it on the way......

Great for holidaymakers, not so good for those of us wishing to actually do stuff with our horses :-/

So the other day we brought the girls back to the house so they could escape the heat in the barn. Elentari's first experience of being on a road went rather well, she spooked at the first car that went past, then decided as Sky hadn't reacted, these things weren't really worth worrying about :-)

Those white lines on the floor were definitely suspicious though.....

Then today, having brought Gandalf home too, she did her first ride and lead. Unfortunately, he has decided he doesn't like her much, and tries to bite her if she gets too near his head (I guess he's had enough after all these years of Sky and Kinna biting his neck) so she was a bit hesitant to follow along at first and kept trying to get back to Sky. Maybe I'll have to do a R&L with just the two girls, that could be, um, interesting!! But for a first time out, she wasn't half bad.....

She even went under the railway bridge......

....and jumped the ditch :-)

We had to go early to beat the heat, got out at about 7am, would have been earlier but we had to wait for the SNO to decide which shoes to wear. Apparently pink flowery sandals are just the thing on a bicycle....

Talking of footwear, Ali and I found some shoes to go with the black studded dress, how about these?

Half price too :-)

In other news this week we have been to see Kinna again and she's looking a whole lot better. In fact, she's showing signs of wanting to break out of the "invalid" paddock and rejoin the others. She was happy to have a headcollar on this time so she must be less sore.  Her skin is all falling off though, it's really weird, the stuff coming off is as stiff as a board and there's new skin growing underneath it.

The vet called with Squaw's blood test results whilst I was there, her liver has been affected by something which is why she's so photosensitive (couldn't get a needle anywhere near Kinns to take blood, but it's got to be the same, the symptoms are identical). Vet reckons it was millepertuis (new bit of vocab for me) - St John's Wort. But why would they eat that with all the grass in that huge field? Or is it just the pollen as there is so much more of it around this year due to the wet weather and it's flowering later than usual?

Beaumont TREC

Well yesterday turned out to be a brilliant day. For a start we didn't have to get up at silly o'clock as Isabelle had put us in for an 11am start. So we loaded the boys, stopped Kinna who was trying to follow them up the ramp to the trailer, and set off, arriving at about 9.30. There were a lot of people there, more than I've ever seen at a competition up there, including a team from St Antoine d'Auberoche, a club where one of the teachers is a former national TREC champion!! The weather was a bit better than last Sunday, in fact it got a bit too hot in the afternoon, Tanya ended up putting her socks in the fridge.........

First up was the Control of Paces. So cantering slowly and walking quickly. For the first time, Tanya managed to keep Ches cantering the whole way, but unluckily just had a foot out of the line, so nul points......

Ali was good too, her horse, Karim, one of Isabelle's,  knows his job.....

But we let the side down as G dropped out of canter, being reluctant to leave his mates......

After that, it was on to the PTV, the obstacle course. We were a bit worried about the jumping, because I'm basically crap at it which is why I gave it up as a teenager, but it has to be done, so......
pointed G at the log, he went for it big time and put in a huge jump to make sure he didn't hit it, I said to the audience (another team of Brits) "try not to laugh too much!" as we went for it.......then the hedge, which was tricky as there was a slope right behind it, we made a slightly better job of that, and frankly, I was just glad I stayed on, unlike some of the other competitors who came unstuck at that one. Here's Ali jumping them with considerably more style than me.....

At least we made a decent job of the gate opening, and even got a round of applause from the audience :-)

After that we had the usual 3 hours of doing nothing for the French lunch break. The bacon sarnies cooked in the trailer proved very tasty, sadly the bottle of wine to go with them, which was being brought to us by Mike on his motorbike, fell victim to him having to swerve on to the verge to avoid being flattened by a lorry on the way up, and broke. So we had tea instead........

Saddled up again after lunch to tackle the POR (orienteering). Squinted over the map which involved riding through Beaumont twice, the little maze of streets is difficult to see, and the route we had to copy wasn't easy to follow, but got it copied in the end. Off we went, and we decided to go for it for once as usually we are far too slow. The times were between 6 and 7km/h for the Club teams. Chester in particular was raring to go, so we made it to checkpoint one without being overtaken for once!

Off we went again, through the maze of little cobbled streets in Beaumont, then out into the countryside, which is pretty spectacular out thay way. There were lots of bottles of water at the checkpoints, and buckets for the horses; one house we passed had even left a bucket out and a big sign saying "pour les chevaux". Just as well, as the 24 degrees forecast turned out to be a bit conservative......at least some of the time we were in the woods where it was much cooler.

So we made it back in hopefully not too bad a time, but then as it was already gone 6, we packed up and left befrore the prizegiving. But Jo was there and called us on our way back to say that we'd come third in our category (out of 6) which we are really pleased with, G and I got 407 points which is a personal best. And bitless for the first time too......Looking forward to getting the score sheets so we can see exactly how we did.

A good day for Team Horsetales! Lots more photos  here

Kinna the hooley-gan

As the naughty teenager has been a bit neglected of late, I took her out for a bit of ride and lead with Ches this morning, first thing before it got too hot. Thought we'd go along by the river under the trees in the shade. This turned out to be a bad move, a) because a lot of the path is still under water from all the rain we've had and b) because all that still water means the mozzies have been breeding like crazy....

Anyway, decided to stick with it as water is a TREC obstacle and we do have a comp lined up on Sunday....

So Ches stands there and looks at the water and decides he'd like to turn round and go back now, thanks.

No, I say, let's give it a go, you never know, it might be fun........Nope, says he, I want to go back up the path and eat this nice grass. No come on, Ches, back to the water.....and so on. After a few minutes of this Kinna obviously gets fed up with the whole going round in circles business and decides to investigate this strange wet stuff with a delicate foreleg. Oh, I can put both feet in, she thinks. And have a drink....

No problem! And look, I can splash it all over everyone if I scrape my hooves (had to put the camera away at this point as it's not waterproof.......). Given this example, and that of Choccy racing though the water over and over again and adding to the general wetness of my clothing, Ches decides it's not full of monsters waiting to eat him and wades gamely through the big lake of water to the dryer mudbank opposite. And carries on, not even hesitating at the next lake across out path.

Great, I think, nice hack shaping up after all. Then we come to the tree down across the path. No problem, another bit of TREC practise, Ches steps over it nicely. Not so the teenager, who soars effortlessly over the log and attempts to go hooleying off up the path.....I really need a helmetcam for moments such as this!!

I get her back under control, we carry on. Now the game is every time the dog comes up behind us, try to scoot forwards and take off. Every time the dog goes past us, try to chase after her, in between times, bite Ches on the neck and see if he'll play with me, you get the idea.......

We bounce along the river path in this manner until we come to a completely submerged area, so I backtrack and find a deer trail up into the vineyard next door. At the end of the path is another log, Ches steps over it, the kangaroo on the end of the leadrope takes to the air once more........

Then it's back to the dog baiting game......

Can I chase her? Go on, let me......

We eventually get to the road and turn for home, and a new trick comes out, let's stop dead and see if she'll let me stay here and eat all this grass. I manage to stop Ches before we run out of leadrope and we then have a short battle of wills until she starts moving again. After a while I find a shady spot and stop for some authorised grazing. And we head back, by now it's very hot, so Kinna reverts to dope on a rope mode.......does this look like a troublemaker to you?

Gotta love her, never a dull moment. She's brave though, and if we can get that energy channelled I reckon she'd be a good eventer. Now I just need to find someone mad enough to be her jockey.....

Beaumont Bivouac day 2

Day 2
I wake early in my comfy bed at Jo’s, grab some breakfast and we load Socianda to get to the stables nice and early as we want to get going in good time. Needless to say, the French are all faffing again. Our 3 horses are soon all tacked up and ready to go and we stand around waiting for the others.....

They finally get going at 9.15. We are apparently doing 42 km today, and will be back at Beaumont by 5.30. No way is this happening at this rate, I think. We set off along the road to Limeuil, where the two rivers, the Dordogne and the Vézère, meet. We troop along the bridge admiring the view.

We troop through the town and get photographed by the tourists. Then we head up into the hills.

Normally this would not be a problem, we have hills round us too. But the ground here is all really stony and Gandalf and Seraphina struggle with this and try to walk up the grassy sides of the track shoving Ali and I into trees and gorse bushes as they go. The arabs have all gone ahead tripping along like mountain goats but we lag behind as we don’t want to push our two.

We get to the top and go into some woods. Down another very stony track. Then the call comes from the front “Demi-tour!”, we’ve gone the wrong way, we all turn around and I find myself at the front of the column for once and Gandalf is not obliged to trot every two minutes to catch up. We like this.

 Down another track in the woods, another wrong move and another demi tour. We start to get annoyed, I get my map out and for the first time consider striking out on our own.

Eventually they find the right path and we go down the hill. And straight back up another very stony track, this time in full sun which is starting to heat things up a bit. I start wondering why we haven’t had a water stop for the horses, I expect G & S are wondering the same thing! A difficult (and for us, slow) climb to the top reveals a stunning view across the Dordogne valley but also leaves Gandalf breathing heavily.

I go marching up to Luc and ask how much more of this there is as our two shod hooves out of eight can’t deal with the stones. He agrees that the terrain isn’t great and we veer away from the intended trail and take the road.

I look at the map and see the lunch stop is still a few km away. We trudge on all the way back down the hill, past a nice looking restaurant with happy people emerging from air conditioned cars in the car park looking forward to a gourmet lunch. I take out our emergency cake bars and grimly ask myself why I’m doing this again......

Eventually we arrive at Mauzac, a very pretty little place by the river. We’ve been on the trail for nearly 5 hours thanks to the wrong turns in the woods and the horses have had enough. We unsaddle and water them and even cadge some hard feed from Isabelle’s lot as they need the energy. I hear Luc telling Stewart he can get some footage of them cantering on the next stretch by the canal to Lalinde and take my map over and get him to mark the route back on it as no way will ours be up to doing that. We eat lunch, watch a couple of the other horses try to kick each other, they obviously haven’t run out of energy, then saddle up and head out on our own, just me & Ali. We ride down the right of the canal, where the trees are for shade.

A little while later, after presumably a load more faffing, the others come charging past on the other side of the canal in the sun. We wave, and amble on.

They all come to a sudden stop as Luc’s horse has a massive spook at some water sprinklers and he has to get off and lead it past! We continue to follow them as they walk down the other side of the canal, then they cross to our side and canter off and we lose them round a bend in the track.

We amble on towards Lalinde, the horses manage a little trot but we don’t do much as they are so tired. We arrive in Lalinde and see a lorry across the river which looks familiar. It’s Isabelle come to give us a lift back!

We cross the bridge, unsaddle the horses and Gandalf, who knows a lift home when he sees one,  goes straight up the ramp (of the same lorry he didn’t want to go in at the Label Loisir) like he’d been doing it all his life.....

Seraphina, however, had other ideas.....

It’s quite a steep ramp and she didn’t want to go up it. Gandalf called her from inside, she refused to put a foot on the ramp. I tried all the usual tricks, backing up, putting pressure on with the headcollar, nothing. Isabelle found a lunge line to put round her back end, she pulled back against it. By this time, we’d attracted quite an audience of tourists to watch the pretty pony being uncooperative. The temperature was in the mid 30s and I am seriously considering tying her to a tree and leaving her there when I try one last trick of lifting her front feet up on to the ramp. She seems to realise that she won’t win this argument and stops pulling and simply steps up the ramp. We all wish she’d had this revelation half an hour ago........

We pile into the lorry, along with Isabelle’s lovely 3 legged Collie, and take the easy way back to the stables. I check out my iPhone app and we’ve still done 30 of the 42km planned for that day. Not a bad effort for a couple of unfit cobs......

But I prefer my own rides, which involve more water stops for the horses, beer stops for the riders and a whole lot less faffing......!

Greedy fat horse......

 Had some new hay delivered yesterday. Gandalf marched straight up to it and started munching. Anyone would think the poor boy was wasting away......every time I went out to check on them, he was eating. He wouldn't let the girls anywhere near the stuff so in the end I shut him in the box for a while so they could get a look in.

Same thing this morning, he just doesn't seem to know when to stop! So now he's back inside (much to the disgust of the ducks who were happily going through the poo in there for choice morsels, my chooks and ducks just love horse poo!) and Mav is next to him with his head over the door, they're like an old married couple, have to be together all the time.

Hot here today and lots of flies so they've all got their "gas masks" on. Poor Kinna has such a sad excuse for a tail (that's Appys for you) that maybe I should get her some extensions so she could actually use it to move a fly or two......