DONE - NO. 39: Horseride Along A Beach

Yee-haaaa! Today I did go horseriding along a beach, and survived - it's a freaking miracle!! I have tried horseriding a couple of times before, once in North Wales while I was still in my twenties, and the last time in west Wales in 1999! Both times I hated it - they're awfy high off the ground. I swore I'd never do it again but, when compiling this list of things to do I asked for family input. This was my sister-in-law Mags' contribution. Mags, a talented and successful dressage horseridey person.

Contemplated doing this in South Wales but when I knew we'd be heading to Cabo Verde thought I might as well do it in sunshine - and also thought the sand would be softer if I fell off. Thankfully, I survived 😍
The first 'challenge' was getting on my trusty steed - a horse called 'Lion' - not a terribly reassuring name for somebody who was scared, but he did turn out to be a gentle soul.

The reason I dreaded trying to get on the horse - they're awfy high as I've just mentioned, and I'm not! I'm 'wee', or to use one of Stewart's historic pet names for me, I'm 'Stumpy'! And they didn't have a box I could stand on. Thankfully, with a bit of effort on my part, and a bit of ungraceful manhandling from Rivaldo, my guide, I did manage to get my leg over!!! At this age its quite something to get your leg over, anything!

Anyway I did, I got settled, and after a lot of patient coaching I eventually worked out how to steer this thing - though I was a bit nervous to find out there was no proper brakes, gears or ignition - though if you read my quadbiking post you'll probably think this is a good thing.

So off we went, an hours trek up the beach, Cabo Verde is very desert like and arid so there wasn't a lot to see, probably just as well as I was concentrating so hard on gripping on to the wee saddley bit in front me - so hard, my hands still ache. 'Relax' Rivaldo kept saying - 'Relax? You freaking nuts!?'. But, eventually I did settle into it. He asked me a few times if I wanted to trot, hell no, I'm walking up a mountain on Sunday and want to be able to keep moving. The first time I went on a horse I had trouble even sitting down for a week afterwards! Right enough, even though I said no, 'Lion' had other ideas and did what he wanted a few times, exactly the reason I cursed that there was no stop button. But, I survived. On the way back we did a detour right to the waters edge and as the sun was dipping it was pretty cool. Don't have pics of this as I gave my camera to Stewart to capture the start and end of the ride. Thankfully, he was able to film us 'coming in to land'.

So, another challenge completed, this was my 40th thing done, 10 to go so I'm now on the final furlong (see what I did there!)  I'm 50 next month so it's going to be pretty close, but, I think I've done damn well so far. Below, another few pics of my horseride along a beach.

See you next time, adios amigos. Xxx