To the beach

I've been talking about doing this for AGES and last weekend we finally managed it.  My lovely mare and I went to the beach for the very first time.  To tell the truth she was terribly behaved the first trip, and bordered on dangerous, almost leaping on top of me as she plunged around when I finally got her through the narrow walkway.  At 21 years of age she should know better but she completely lost her head and it reminded me as I struggled to control her leaping high above me how far from strong I still am.  There are times when horses, due to their sheer size and unpredictability, give you a real wake up call as to how strong and powerful they really are.  She's normally very well behaved and very obedient but she really lost her head on the first trip.  As a result it took me a fair while before I got on her and to be completely honest I was really pleased to see my friend Britt who helped me enormously by jumping on her first.  I'm still being careful and probably still getting my confidence back after being so sick and so it was awesome of Britt to jump on a still very flightly mare.  Darren and I returned to the beach the following morning with her and she was a fair bit better behaved although still difficult to manage on a couple of occasions.  I didn't waste much time and jumped on fairly quickly and she was pretty good after I was in the saddle.  Darren showed considerable horsemanship in hanging on to my plunging mare when she reared and leapt after we left the beach.  She was impatient to leave the carpark and didn't appreciate stopping to loosen the girth!  He's very good with her and I was thankful to have his strength at the end of it all!


Jessica took a lovely couple of photos.


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