A Good Day.

The clouds have returned but the day was warm and very pleasant.

In fact I've had a wonderful day. Before he went off to man the RNLI shop (two customers & £11) Peter gave me a hand to turn the freezer in the utility so that I could measure how much space it would need. My next step was to cut the beech worktop. Five minutes with the jigsaw got me to within two inches of the wall and then the fun began. Tortuously I was able to get through the next inch using a hand saw which took quite a while. The last inch was a problem, with the wall and the overhanging windowsill I couldn't reach it with saw or any type of blade. I was forced to drill a series of holes until finally I broke through the wood. I finished just in time to get ready to go riding. Instead of my usual hour's lesson this week we went out for a two and a half hour's hack. And what a ride it was. We rode through so many different aspects of the valley. From bridleways and country lanes with verges glowing with a carpet of golden celandines sprinkled with the occasional clump of primroses or a brash dandelion, to fields full of ewes and their lambs, woods with trees bursting with fresh leaves and blossom to forestry land where we had the usual long canter through the trees. Sometimes we were riding down in the valley and at other times we were high on the tops of the steep hills. After the canter a teenage girl who was riding with us said "that was wonderful, I've never done anything like that before.' I was riding Meg one of the newer horses. She's less rotund now and getting fitter but she did fall back to trot several times on the uphill canter. Behaviour wise she was fine, she took a sideways look at a few stranger sights, such as a fallen gate in a gateway we were trotting past but nothing that would have counted as a spook. She did start tossing her head towards the end probably because she was getting tired as this was the first longer hack she had been on. Back at the stables we untacked our horses and the instruction came to put their rugs on. It took me a while to work out how to get Meg's rug on as not only was part of the lining coming away but it had an extra neck piece attached and the clips were unusual, eg three straps under her tummy rather than two. I'd just got it all worked out when we were asked to take the rugs off as they would probably want to roll once they were out in the field. So off came the troublesome rug and we led the horses up to the field. It helps the staff out and of course we like doing it too. We had such a good ride that we've booked a four hour ride in a couple of weeks. One of my reasons for doing today's ride was to see how my aged body would cope but regular riding and/or the squats regime has paid off and I was fine afterwards.

That was a good thing as no sooner had I got home that it was time to change and head out for Pilates. It was an excellent session tonight with the focus being on the small muscles that link the vertebrae. Very useful for me with my poor back. We still had to work hard but then finished with ten minutes of 'relaxation'. By the end I could have just gone to sleep on the hall floor I was so relaxed.

 

This morning there were a couple of Great Crested Grebes swimming by the reef. Not a bird we see there that often while my resident blackbirds were enjoying the sun perching on the newly trimmed hedge.

A nice sunset to end a lovely day.