Day Fifteen

This morning was so gorgeous. Sunshine, blue skies, frost. I didn’t take my camera when I went out early with the dog, then wished I had. These are the photos I would have taken.

- Looking down from the fields, and the valley is full of mist like a huge white serpent coiling out of Hebden Bridge into Mytholm and on towards Todmorden.

- Then looking up the field towards Old Town and the grass is golden with sunshine, glittering with frost. A huge tree at the top against the blue sky.

- A single bird flying across the perfect blue of the sky, like a cursor across a blank screen.

- Brown cows munching in a field, half in sunshine half in shade.

Johnny has gone running up to Shackleton, Horodiddle and Blake Dean. I’m jealous. It will be utterly beautiful up there this morning. But today has other treats in store for me. 

Two weeks into the Walk and Ride Festival and at last I’ve been riding. Izzy and I took two buses and a taxi over the border into Lancashire and went pony trekking. These are the lovely fell ponies we rode on, Danny and Target.

It’s years since I used to ride horses, and it was strange to begin with. But two hours in and the rhythm felt completely right. The horse was moving and I was moving with it in a way that was familiar. They were very well trained well-behaved ponies. They went forward when we told them, and stopped on command. No frisking or pushing our legs into fences and gate posts. By the end I wanted to trot, and so did Target. But we were very good and kept to the sedate pace we were meant to.

I could imagine myself on a long journey, across the country, in the days when horses were the main type of transport. Distance seemed achieveable and desirable, I wanted to stay on the horse for a long time. But it was only a two hour ride, and we had to dismount, feed the ponies some carrots, and return to Yorkshire.

Oh, and here are some pictures I took when I went out with Bet later this morning and remembered the camera.