Horses

So! Last Friday I went horse riding for the first time. It was kind of out of the blue, my friend's friend who I had only ever met once before, a few weeks ago, so it was really nice of her to say I could come with.
For some reason, when I was first asked, I jumped at the chance. I just thought "haha ace, I bet that's pretty good!". I surprised myself a little bit, thinking that, because for as long as I could remember, I had maintained that I was quite scared of horses. But I guess I just thought, screw it.

As we pulled into the stables car park, I suddenly got a small hit of fear. By the time I got out of the car, I had forgotten all about it.
Anyway it was proper good. I can see why so many girls do horse riding, (if you know what I mean... Giggidy). My horse was called Buster. As a side note, one of the horses was called Kevin which I thought was a totally hilarious name for a horse (also there was one, and I swear it had a curly moustache). It was at a riding school in Saltburn, and we all went down to the beach. There was about 10 of us in the group, and 4 people from the riding school were with us. For some reason, maybe cause I said I'd never ridden before and had no idea about any of it, or maybe just because I was one of the first to get assigned and put on a horse, I was at the front. The girl who helped me on was dead nice though, and told me that basically all you need to do is pull the left reign left and the horse will go left, the same with right, and to stop it moving, just pull both. Simples. After a little while, my horse started to very slowly wander forwards. "stop moving!" I squeaked and pulled the reigns. He stopped. The system worked! So we just stood there for about 10 minutes while everyone else got on their horses. In the not so distant distance, another horse whinnied, and then from deep inside the guts of my horse, he whinnied back. Bit scary, but quite funny. I didn't realise a whinny was such a hearty thing.

Anyway, an older woman who I think was the boss, came along, put a lead on my horse and guided us all over the road, down some paths and eventually to the beach. She said to me, about halfway there "oh you've got your balance very quickly there". Everyone likes praise, I was beaming. Though I don't know if she just said it cause I was a total novice, and just wanted to boost my confidence. The hill down to the beach was quite steep, but I figured it must be fine for the horses seeing as they go every day, but the bottom few yards of it was proper steep and I was a little worried. Buster was a little champion though, and did not tip me off.

I think I did pretty good though, they even had us doing a little bit of trotting, which is a lot harder than it looks, also bruised my arse a lot, something which didn't take effect until I dismounted Buster afterwards. Trotting is exciting, but scary. I started getting a hang of it though, its like you've just got to match the rhythm of the horse, otherwise you just end up jiggling about a lot on top, trying not to fall off. Which is mainly how I did, but I did seem to get it right a couple of times. On the way back we had to stop and wait at the rail tracks, Buster took this opportunity to have a nibble of the hedge, nearly toppling me off, and then I couldn't get him back up. Greedy horse.
Anyway that about covers it, it was dead good, I enjoyed it loads. I had total saddle sore at the end, something which I didn't feel at all during the ride, but kicks in as soon as you get off. My aching thighs and bum only just recovered a couple of days ago. I didn't take any pictures, so this will be a pictureless blog.