Day One - Horse ride for Henry and Kyle

Heart in my mouth as we drove to the stables, unsure if I would find a hopping lame horse and be unable to go for a second time. But Lime seemed much better so the first dose of bute has done the trick. Both horses loaded fine and we arrived at Hartington Top late morning. Somehow Lime had decided to make a little more room on his side and had shoved the partition over a bit! Ooops. But both horses unscathed!

The first part of the day was along disused railway which had been re-surfaced so the ground was good and we did a bit of trotting and Lime held up fine. Then the wind started to pick up & a big black cloud was looming ahead. Cara decided it was time to put on her bright pink pac-a-mac. As soon as she got it out of her saddle bag, the wind whipped it up and it was flapping out behind her. Oshie + flappy bright pink thing = mad bucking fit! Lime, who was happily minding his own business, was all of a sudden being left behind his new best mate so he decided to gallop off after them.

We then had a proper drenching. In my wisdom I had left my waterproof chaps in the van with Mike and pretty soon the water was running down the backs of our necks. But we were still smiling ?cos we were on the Pennine bridleway after months and months of planning and thinking we would never get here after Lime?s lameness.

About 50 gates in we came to an awkward one and Lime panicked and I got my foot wedged on the bolt as he tried to dash through which made a hole in my boot and bruised my foot. Very painful but could have been worse. We made it to our first nights accommodation just before dusk, cold and wet and wishing we had a B&B instead of camping. But there was a lovely pub right next to the farm and we sat in there by the fire and got warm and dry and toasted our first eventful day! 19 miles done.
Horse Ride for Henry and Kyle