SERC- Irvine beach 10.04.11

Scottish Endurance Riding Club Pleasure ride at Irvine beach

I had been looking forward to this ride for months as I had been told that it is one of the best rides if you like being on beaches. I have to say it was well worth the wait and the 4.30am start! Irvine is a good 2.5 hour drive from us so we had to set off early in order for us to be there, horses offloaded and ready to be vetted at 9.30am.

The ride was 20 kilometres and was mostly beach. It has been a bit of a childhood dream to gallop along a beach, through the water and that is exactly what we managed to do this time. It was such a beautiful, sunny day so the horses were quite pleased to go into the water to cool down a little. It is such an amazing feeling to be galloping along a beach on a sunny day.

I took Oscar who enjoyed his day out but finds sand a bit hard going, he much prefers either roads and tracks or fields. He normally feels as though he can run twice the distance we have done but on this one I think he was happy to have finished when we did. The two mares were great, my mum rode her new mare (Sigrit) and this was her first outing. Sigrit especially liked being in the water and kept trying to get down to roll with my mum onboard! We were also joined by Erin who rode really well and enjoyed her first pleasure ride. Erins horse for the day was Silke who has done a few other pleasure rides with us and is always a good horse to take along, she didnt find the sand hard work at all and thoroughly enjoyed herself.

One of the things to play a big part in making this such a good day was that everyone was so friendly and helpful.

As a bit of fun for easter we were given mini cream eggs along the way and Oscar won an easter egg and bag of horsey treats for being best turned out, although I think I will have to eat the easter egg on his behalf. It really was a great outing and I would like to say thank you to all of the ladies at the Glasgow branch for making the whole day a lot of fun!