SERC – Lochinch

Date posted: 3rd December 2011

Scottish Endurance Riding Club – Dumfries branch

Last sunday I was expecting a journey of two hours or so to get to the pleasure ride, for some reason I had got it into my head that Lochinch was close to Glasgow. The night before the ride I looked at the map and realised this was actually a four hour drive and we were leaving home at 5am as Lochinch is actually down next to Stranraer! It was actually a lovely drive on the way there as very few other vehicles were on the roads at that time of the day and it was another part of the world that I hadn’t seen.

To go this time was Oscar with me and riding my 12 year old gelding was Gemma. There were two options for distances, one being 16k and we did the 25k. The distance was easy enough for the horses as was a nice flat ride and we were able to maintain a good pace throughout. The weather suited the horses too as was pretty cool but the sun was with us for most of the ride also, although we did get pelted by hailstones at one point! I was so excited to find a fallen tree on our way which was a perfect little practice jump, I am not a jumper at all and have no interest in show jumping now, infact I don’t even own a set of jumps so was nice to find a natural jump along the way. I did laugh at one point as we were trotting up a lane and dozens of pheasants just kept flying out making such a racket, I was on edge waiting for more to fly at us, under or over us and the horses just carried on trotting and didn’t even flinch!

We finished the ride in good time, the boys weren’t out of breath at all nor were they too hot because of the cool air. The heart rates for both horses were very low on finishing so I was really pleased with that.

The ladies organising and helping on the day were so nice and one very kind lady had made soup for us all which she gave to us on finishing the ride, it was such a nice thing to do and very much appreciated.

The journey home seemed so much longer and we were all glad to finally get home. I know that I say this a lot but again I was so proud of the horses, it amazes me that they get out of a horsebox after a long journey and behave so well, go out do a 25k ride, stand around for a while and then back into the box for another long journey. They were perfect gents throughout the entire very very long day!

There is only one SERC branch that Oscar and I have not yet done which is Argyll, hopefully it won’t be cancelled as it was my personal goal to do at least one ride at every Scottish branch this year. Hopefully next year I can take a few week ends off and take my boy to do some pleasure rides or competitive rides in England and Wales.