I spent part of the day exercising the horses today. I had intended to walk all three of them around in turn, for lots of reasons, they are spending a lot of time inside at the moment as its so muddy so it would do them good was one reason, another is because the date has been set for our Offas Dyke trek next year and if I am to complete the 176 miles in less than a week I have to be a tad fitter than I am at present.
Yesterday we had a baconrollathon at work in support of Children in Need, this entailed Tracey and I taking a large piece of bacon into work and cooking all staff and visitors bacon rolls for which they made a contribution. We raised £40 and everyone enjoyed the bacon, except for our resident vegan who contributed anyway. This did mean though that I had access to too many calories, having an abundance of bacon rolls and crab apple jelly proved too tempting and I indulged in breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, early lunch, late lunch and afternoon tea. My commitment to ridding the world of bacon rolls only ended when I drove home and did the evening rounds.
However, scoffing bacon rolls wasn't the only reason I needed to exercise the flab off on the hill today. Last night we were invited to dinner over at Robin and Jenny's. The food and company was excellent but special mention has to be made of the Blueberry and Mango pavlova that Jenny had made for pudding. It was just fantastic, the crisp meringue shell gave way to a mallow soft centre, the fresh fruit and cream, the thing was massive and to my shame I ended up having three servings. All this was washed down with beer, wine, port and whiskey, such over indulgence has a price to be paid, which was three times around the hill.
William dragged his hooves all the way around, taking ten steps forward, two back, he had to be persuaded, coaxed, cajoled, shouted at, dragged, pleaded with almost every step of the way. It took nearly twenty minutes to get along sheep skull lane which is only three hundred yards or so. Goodness knows what got into the stubborn beast but he would advance slowly then gaze off into the distance with a sad expression, every now and then he would whinny. I couldn't tell if he was shouting for help, calling to any other horses on the hill to get this madman intent on exercising away from him or trying to answer the mechanical digger noise that drifted in on the wind every now and then. Whatever it was William turned the forty minute journey into an hour and ten minutes. It took so long I almost missed a surprise visit from the Stable Sprite who called in for a coffee and a chat about butchers.
Trevor, on the second circuit was completely the opposite, the pocket rocket never walks anywhere. I followed in his wake holding onto a long leading rein for dear life rather like an out of control water skier following a boat. Every now and then my yanking on the rope persuaded him to halt briefly which would give me just enough time to regain my balance, steady myself and catch him up before he set off at high speed giving me whiplash injuries as the slack created in the rope suddenly disappeared. When I got back I looked like I had been dragged through a hedge backwards, which was a pretty accurate description for of parts of the journey.
Williams circuit was too slow, Trevor's circuit was too fast, which means Apollo's circuit must be just right.
It was.
He set out with grim determination, straight for the haystack, which was where he stayed happily munching instead of being frog marched around. As far as I was concerned unlike last nights pavlova you can have too much of a good thing. Twice was enough!
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