Ouch!

I’ve been a silly bunny! I’m good at giving advice to others, but not so good at taking it myself. If anybody at our yard had asked the advisability of taking a 18 hand horse who had not been ridden for a couple of days, through fairly dense forest paths with loads of low branches, fallen logs etcetera, on a windy spooky day: I would have said they were a bit potty. I did just that today, and I think its confirmation if, any were needed, that I have gone from a nervous rider to bit of a loony.

With our friend Cat onboard her hyperactive little Exmoor “Rebel” (pictured above) trotting in the lead, Murphy crashed and bounced his way along through the low hung undergrowth, occasionally cantering on the spot, and being completely over the top. I clung on flattened to his back as branches, some as thick as my wrist whipped over my head.

This was all rather jolly fun, and I was feeling quite pleased with myself, until that is, a small log on the path that I did not see, happened to coincide with a branch above. My noble mount, doing his job perfectly, spotted the log and commenced a lovely graceful jump. I, meanwhile, had spotted the branch but sadly not the log. I therefore ducked forward and down..........meeting Murphy’s head coming up....... with my mouth. To use the old East End expression: “there was Claret!” Temporarily blinded with pain, and convinced I had broken my front teeth and probably my nose as well, I wrestled Murph to a halt, wiped away some of the blood, and managed to convince myself that I still had my teeth, and my nose was roughly the same old familiar shape (difficult to tell with thick riding gloves on).

I carried on with the ride but felt like a complete idiot as the Forest was really busy with walkers and mountain bikers today, and I had a pair of lips that would out do Mick Jagger, even should he decide to have collagen injections!

I will write it here clearly to remind myself: Cantering a fizzed up great Irish Draft in dense woodland is as safe as those other well known sports, catching the javelin and heading the shot!