Jelly legs (but a very brave pony)

[spotti]

Let me set the scene:

The sun is shining, the grass is lightly frosted but thawing, faith is tacked up and raring to go. I hop on, head down the yard to go out across the fields but Faith preferred to go up the track towards the road sooo off we go. Said hello to the new horsey neighbours (on the way (the horses that is, the people weren't up yet!) and off we poddled up the lane.

I thought we'd just go and look at te cars passing and then head home, but no, faith decided to go up to the mouth of the junction and wanted to cross! Cue my legs turning to jelly! Luckily the roads were nice and quiet (apart from a motorbike gang whizzing by - faith didn't bat an eyelid by the way) so across the parkway we went, through the gate, and onwards up the road to where I live at the top.

Faith was as chilled as anything and calmly walked around the block, saying hello to a few confused drivers and dog walkers along the way - oh, and a little girl who LOVED seeing a horsey in the sunshine .

I jumped off to go back across the parkway because my road nerves had chickened out (no reason why as faith was a poppet) but I thought it wise not to push our luck.

Anyway, crossed the road safely (waving at YO's brother as we went) and then I hopped back on and we wandered back home on the buckle.

Not a bad hack to say we've not ridden on a road in nearly 2 1/2 years!!!

Still don't know why faith wanted to go out on the roads this morning but all I can say is that I'm glad she's brave 'cos I had jelly legs for most of the ride!!!

She's such a good pony. Obviously got lots of fuss and treats when we got home safely.

Love that ponio of mine

[toomanyhorses]

Well done on riding on the roads especially as it wasn't your idea ;D. Hopefully it will help build your confidence ack up for roadwork incase you ever need to ride on them.

[haffyfan]

Well done you two. Crossing the parkway now thats scarey dairy!!!

[solomon]

Well done, we used to cross a dual carrageway on one of our rides, would never do it on my own. Wealso had a motorway to go under on another ride that was strangely ok!

[haffyfan]

we use to go under the motorway on one ride too - the horses soon got use to the dark tunnel (between J36/35a Zara near the old Hall where kes was filmed), thers a similiar tunnel under the stocksbridge bypass too out of the woods. The one that scared me a bit was the bridge over the link road from 35a to the stockbridge bypass, it's really fast and busy and the bridge only has low sides if your horse is quite large, not rto mention a scary bity where there is a join that they always seem to spook at and requires hopping over!

Just given me a thought for a thread...

[spotti]

It's funny the things we do with our horses! In all honesty a soon as faith decided she wanted to cross the road, my legs turned to jelly! If I didn't trust her so much then I might have insisted on turning tail and heading home BUT somehow that brave ponio convinced me that we would be ok, and bless her, she certainly made sure of it .

Before we moved to where we are now we used to hack out on busy B roads and across dual carriageway/motorway bridges on a regular basis...throwing in a few small roundabouts to boot...but now I don't have to go in the road, I've turned into a right old wuss. Might have something to do with faiths old trick of spinning and bolting in front of incoming buses (she would move at the last second but seemed to like to make me poop my pants first) and probably the redundant necessity of road-hacking that has allowed me to turn chicken, but tbh, if you ain't gotta risk your life to ride, why bother!?

It would be nice if we could keep up te good work with the road though as it would mean I could go visit my mum on faith, pop in to see my grandma in faith, and the biggest dream is to ride faith up to the church on my wedding day (in a couple if years - plenty of time to practice ).