Guerra de las Avejas!

Yesterday we found a great area of grass near the riverbed in Elda, so today gives us a well earned rest.. It hasn't been so easy this time around finding good grazing with water, so poor Mark is having to fetch and carry while we're here.
I can't walk that far yet, let alone carry 20 litres of water.
Lo & behold here comes Mark already with some water & telling me there's a lake just over there! - and we're leaving tomorrow! Doh!
Tomorrow is exciting! For us more than for Tio who may have a tooth ache - we've been invited to the house of a very kind co horse owner in Spain, 6ks north of here for the night, but our alterior motive is for Tio to see the dentist! He has been gurning on & off for a few days, as if he has toothache.. Can't let him suffer & though he does seem to be eating normally, we can't let him be under par on such a trip as this.
We have naughtily been inside another house with a fenced in paddock recently, by invitation of course, lovely man called Trevor throwing a bbq! We certainly have some luck!
We have endured some harrowing experiences though! & no exaggeration! Passing between two rows of bee hives  (right on the GR7 route!!)  was terrifying, we were swarmed! stung on our faces & heads riding through at an increasing speed, panicking, swearing, Marks most sentimental & ingeniously repaired cowboy hat falling to the ground amidst the hives...
He had to go back of course, wearing a full (rain) cape with hood, it was a tense few minutes as me & the horses waited at a 'safe' distance for his return, Rayo was stung on the nose!
I pulled a sting out of my cheek which gave me a chubby cheeky look for a few days which Mark found endearing.
He thankfully returned unharmed & with his hat on.

There's plenty of time in this mode of travel to wonder about the glory of nature, most of our daily routes go over mountains (smallish ones) between towns. So the terrain changes, lush grassy plains, planted, not to be eaten! Then stoney climbs (very hard on the horses feet) amongst the pines, through high gorges, eagle country, bandit country, always wondering whats over the next hill or round the next corner.
Sometimes as we enter towns you can almost hear the eerie whistle of 'The good the bad & the ugly', the tumble weed blows across the dusty track blowing up a cloud & there's not a soul in sight.

Now at dusk, sitting next to Mark as he cooks just outside the woods, I'm looking up at the orange lit town and I can hear kids playing & one in particular, a girl, singing flamenco, sounds amazing, dogs are barking, all very Spanish. I hope no one walks by, as I think it's embarrassing sitting here cooking our dinner on the track! But as Mark says quite rightly, it's too dangerous to cook in the woods, even though it's been a wet spring, the undergrowth is tinder dry.
We had a lovely sighting of a family of wild boar! Animals aren't so disturbed by the sound of hooves approaching, so we could watch them for a bit, none of them were large & the babies were so cute with little stripey bodies.
One night a lone adult boar wandered quite calmly around our camp, it came quite close to us & almost seemed tame, the horses were interested & a little nervous, but actually Rayo lunged forward at the boar to see it off!
Down to the lake now with the horses for a drink, beats a walk to fill bottles at the garage!

Non stop to the border

So here we are in Los Ramanos just over the border from Murcia into Alicante ..next week we'll leave Alicante and enter Valencia province ...it took us about 11 months to get out of Andalucia ..but just a week to get through Murcia ..so we're on the good foot finally!!
  And now about a week later we're at a ruined mansion in ontinyment , Valencia ..
  It's been a long year since that car ride to Baza hospital to see my bionic woman. A year of treading water , a sense of waiting a year to have that year you where gonna have last year...And now it's this year again. .
   This year the boots on the other foot, I've managed to work and walk my way to 90per cent recovery on my ankle . Nikkis recovery is obviously less advanced but being stalwart and stoic she's making a fist of it and is now able to just about mount from the ground..
   However not to be outdone I decided to drop a speaker on my big toe , left of course ,3 days before we left , see attached photo ...will the nail fall off or not? Answers on a postcard to 2000mileaisle. ..
   My understanding of life is that bad luck comes in threes so that's an end to that. ..
   Good luck to all...m

The horse console..

Hours of roaming the glorious Spanish countryside what's a cowgirl to do?
Snacks, suncream, make up, power bank & data... Not to mention the hip fask.. 😀😀

Start of the 2000mileaisle part 2

Nikki striding past the site of last years disaster and hence striding onto the 2000mileaisle part 2 .. looking strong brave and lovely .....

Back to the future!

On the road! Right now with the horses on tow - tentative, but ok, always so admire horses for allowing us to put them on a big square tin, overcoming their fear & trusting us.
So this is the last stressy bit (haha!), getting them safely there & then it's just us & them..
A few days on and us & them, we, have become the herd. After several nights of watching the stress/comfort signals of the horses, we've established a good dynamic for tent/horse/fence positioning.. Tethering is our only certain method of keeping the horses overnight, but Tio isn't an experienced tetherer, so for now, at night he's in a pretend electric fence, by day he's in supervised tether training & doing very well.
Both horses are coping brilliantly with the change & with the work.
We're coping too, amazing how one becomes adjusted to outdoor life so quickly - I'm blotting out a few days of stormy weather & tempers - but yes, even with the rain, we have coped & really enjoyed ourselves.. Infact I have felt guitily glutenous - the scenery has been so wonderful! Gorges so high & so deep, colours vivid with flowers everywhere.. (Please look to facebook for more photos).
Today is our first 2 night stop, we haven't done many kilometres yet, as we plan to increase work gradually for the horses & their packs are heavy.
It's us that are exhausted! My back, my knee where the pin gives pressure both suffering, mainly from damp & mounting which is frequent & difficult.
However! I do say that the kind of exercise needed here for survival, bending over getting things in & out of bags, putting the tent up & lots of core muscle exersion, in the saddle & otherwise, are all in favour of fitness & in that I feel well on the way.
Supplies around here, here being Murcia - at last! Are not easy to come by, at each stop we lack something but thankfully water & grass have not eluded us. We have noted a distinct bit of luck in the last hours of the day, finding a good place after passing barren & dry areas for miles.
It's no accident though I suppose as we always have a mapped aim for the day which has a town within reach if nothing is found.
Right now this is lovely, we've got both horses free in a big one-tape-wrapped-round-trees paddock with an unlikely cliff exit to the back...Mark's cooking breakfast, It's sunny but not too hot, we're next to a lake made by Presa la Risca & will take the horses down to the shore later on.
I'm very much enjoying being gadget girl - might have been the only badge I got in the guides. Some of my bespoke equipment is worth talking about all you horsey people out there! 2 short pieces of a hang glider wing skeleton, joined by slotting into a section of Hep20 plumbing pipe, make perfect fence posts in no time, small & light & portable.
Though I guess most people would have trouble finding a bit of hang gliding wing bone 😂!!
Eggs & coffee just landed beside me.. Thanks to my betrothed.
The rest of this afternoon was spent meeting (out of perhaps 4 cars in 24 hrs, she happened to pass by!!) the lovely maryrosemolenaar.com horse analyst would you believe?! She bought knowledge, understanding, total encouragement & Gin & Tonic!!
What we don't manage to drink we leave under a tree.
Serendipity or what?!

Hopefully this one will post properly unlike the last one of which only a quarter of it was published.. Only 2 photos allowed on here, so do look out for more on our facebook page.
I'll leave you with a Spanish ditty 'Si Mayo te moja, te seca' Thankfully this seems to be true..
Love from us to you all..

Here we go again...

Yes ! Here we go again ! I've now actually ridden my SuperRayo 4 times & we're off in about 7 weeks.. (theoretically !)
In those four rides we've been mainly walking with a few cantering-on-the-spots.
We've slid down steep muddy tractor tracks (with sqealing accompaniment ), we've teetered along on the edge of narrow cliff edged paths, which is unavoidable around these parts, so I've been thouroughly tested & Mark says I've passed with flying colours !
It's been a long and varied recovery, but I'm not going into all that, thankfully we've managed to keep both horses fit and my (though intermittent) ground work with Rayo has paid off in preparing him for the wieght of me & later saddlebags on his back.
I think our relationship has pulled through into a higher understanding & friendship, he seems so happy that things are getting back to normal, that we're getting out and about together again !
Exactly the same could be said for me & Mark. Haha !

One step forward. Two steps back.

Early November and I'm able to shuffle around without crutches. It's a great thing, but painful, my whole body hurts, my right hip hurts more than my left leg, using one crutch has strained a side muscle so I just have to walk now.
Shuffling means I can do some things, so I'm building a new seating area on the roof terrace & I'm kind of lunging Rayo. I've been having such fun with him! I say kind of lunging because what I'm actually doing is asking him to bend evenly on both sides if his body, and to keep his head low, I begin my session with flexing his head to each side and encouraging him to really stretch by holding carrots just out of reach..he always gets the carrot of course! And he gets what I'm asking him to do as the session goes on.. They're only short sessions because I stop when he gets it, which is pretty quick & this is perfect because I can only do a hobbly shuffle (which is all you really need to do in the centre of his small circle). This is all done really calm and really easy.. I probably look ridiculous bending my own body, calming my own self, willing him to match me, but he does it, he looks at me out of the corner of his eye, cocks his ear towards me and drops his nose then you see his back come up, his pace goes suddenly elevated and perfect & he says oh! I'm doing it! He feels great, I feel great, because we know we understand each other & we stop then, so he realises that's all I want.
I'm trying to help him to be relaxed, soft, supple and strong, ready for riding.

The roof terrace seating is looking nice & feels very comfortable, we've all been lounging out there for hours in the late summer sun, between work sessions I should add!

Our long ride next year is still the focus of our intentions, but please forgive us! We made a sad but practical decision to sell our Golden girl.. No! I hear you saying.. But she's only gone down the road to our friends small riding centre & is in a very happy herd there. Meanwhile Rayo is overjoyed to have Tio back to himself!

So we are going with just our boys & a lot less equipment! Remember it took us 3 hours minimum to pack up & leave each day? Well next time we'll be a lot quicker!

Mark is pretty much better, though still limps occasionally.. I really can't believe how much time has gone by with both injuries.
He takes Tio out regularly & usually takes Rayo by lead rein. So both horses are gaining a bit of fitness after their restful summer.
Its rained at last so winter coats are coming, grass too in places..

Today I got on Tio! Walked him around a bit & got off again feeling elated! I look elated in the photo, though Tio doesn't look so happy, perhaps sensing the occasion by the tightness of the reins!
Also, today I drove my car! At last I can depress the clutch!
So that's two forms of transport within my reach, 'shanks pony' is going to take a bit longer as it's terribly slow & still a bit painful.

Crikey! I can't believe I wrote that in November & here I am not much further on.
Didn't realise I had left it unposted, so here you get a double whammy.

It's now 14th January.
Tomorrow I'm going to try to ride Tio again and yesterday I drove the car back from Cadiar without too much trouble (trouble being pain).
You see, my knee has been a problem, the pin and screws have caused alot of pain when under pressure, my hip and back have been problematic due to the effects of compensation.
The last time I rode Tio, I tried a trot & the jolting was unbearable. I cried.
Not through pain but through feeling totally deflated and dis-empowered.
It's just so awful not being capable if something that you have always been not just good at, but it's like second nature to me, being in the saddle, moving with the horse, able to deal with anything the horse might do.
Tio shied at something, he was playing to my weakness, he would have liked to gallop home and was looking for an excuse!
The feeling of helplessness got to me & obviously got to him!
Inspite of my insecurity I rode him home (WALKING TIO!) but haven't tried again since.

Rayo remains my prize, I can't trust him to just walk, especially after all this time not being ridden. When Mark takes the two out, I usually groom & prepare Rayo & he's desperate for me to get on! He nudges me to say it, come on! Let's go!
I can't wait! But waiting is what I have been doing now, since 30th of May - last year!

Oh Happy New year! In which we will make it to England with our horses & get hitched!
I'll tell you what, to be on the trail again, to be just us on our two boys in the wilderness, come hell or high water! That's where I'm gonna be!