Thursday 30 March 2017

The Intended here with a few reflections on the past weeks  ..
most importantly all three horses r in very good form and getting plenty fresh grass and lots of exercise trekking up and down the mountains of las alpujarras and today i rode my tio 15km up the contraviesa to taffy and shauns where there is an endurance race on saturday morn of 20 or 40 km and tomorrow im riding rayo leading lorna another 15km up the...and then possibly racing 2 horses saturday..
Thats the upside ..and the reason for all this riding is that my intended has done her back in whilst clearing a balsa earlier this week so no riding for nikki for a while .. hopefully she will see the chiropractor de Timar forthwith ... and thats the downside..
pre bad back this was the state of play...lorna the packhorse is a diamond and can do the job for us..we love her..we've bought a huge 3 horse lorry in england which will be ferrying the 5 of us over the channel  .. she looks a beauty and the to be brother in law Julian who knows about these things reckons shes a good old girl , and she's resting now at the end of the 2000mileaisle ... i've got my maps covering the spain portion of the gr7 up to Andorra ,bought for us by our friend and neighbour Hannah , and im drawing the route onto the maps using the gr7 waymarked route on viewranger so feeling quite confident about the orienteering (although we always get lost)but i still have no new phone for using with gps/google earth so i see a sharp learning curve on the road ...i've been downloading plenty toonz so we have fresh sounds for the trail and a few audio books including don quixote which seems apt....i've started using a hackamore bridle on tio which is bitless i.e. he's got nothing in his mouth and its working great for both of us and im really happy about that .. our friend and neighbour Chiara is busy making the saddle bags for us ..bespoke all the way  ...nikki just finished the amazon order for cooker,powerbank,speaker,solar panel,memory card,shovel..all should be here next week con surtae..internet shopping is a stressful business  ...just phones to sort now ..maybe a trip to Orgiva...so all in all things goin well and stress levels rising steadily......i will leave u with a photo of our 2 fantastic boys regarding the falling andalucian sun..

Wednesday 8 March 2017

Not long now!

6 weeks and counting!
Still sooo much to do!!
Lots of things coming together but not quite achieved..
Some things taking longer than expected and we're having to breathe and count slowly..

We are now 5 instead of 4 on every ride, Lorna is getting fit, she has now settled in and has passed through the 'shy, careful, newcomer' stage, into the 'if I try this and see what happens' stage...
Carrots are useful and so is Mark.
Tio and Lorna seem well matched in pace.
Rayo and Lorna would be ok if I was Elastigirl.