Six rides in seven days

Reading about the wind chills and snow some of my Stateside blogger pals are enduring is definitely keeping things in perspective for me.

The fields are a bit mushy and we've had some wind and rain but I've ridden almost every day this year and for that I'm very grateful.

Rodney is fairing well - he's holding his weight and being a real trooper. He has two rugs on and a vest and we put round bales in the field so he has everything he needs to be cosy. Historically he is a bum wart to clip (never tried) so I'm happy to leave him fluffy and ride little and often.

This week we've ridden out a lot with a friend who's started riding again after some problems with her back last year. It's been good to have company and this morning we headed out on the roads where we met EVERYTHING you can meet: roadworks, an enormous noisy building site that's sprung up in the middle of nowhere (we had picked a normally quiet route as neither of our horses have done much road work since the summer) motorbike in a field, vans, buses THE LOT. 

Rodney was just not convinced that this was a good idea and for the first half of the ride he shuffled along at a very grudging walk and even stopped dead twice. Once we'd maneuvered past a really loud digger scooping up piles of rubble with the horses on tip toes and us yelling at the driver to try and get him to stop a second, the hilarity kicked in and we had a good laugh. The rest of the ride was uneventful and the horses walked up the side of the dual carriageway like police horses.

We'll go out on the roads again asap as I like to try and fix these 'training potholes' as they crop up. I guess we're so happy and comfy pootling about the farm that it's time to explore a bit more and get used to these road monsters.

Meanwhile, Cady stands in the field, while I avoid riding her. Time to do some soul-searching methinks.

Happy horsing everyone x