half hack, half walk

and the lesson to me is, when it's hot

1.  stay in the arena (no flies)
2.  keep away from the long grass

and

3.  get some better fly repellant

also, he doesn't like soft going

went out for a hack with my stable neighbour jackie on her pony

different horse from yesterday in terms of walking on etc....

but M was surrouned by flies, where tilly wasn't... tilly was sprayed with home made fly repellent and M was sprayed with bought fly repellent

so we went along the back drive, over the ford annd up to the road (in trot); left onto the road, where the flies abated a little, then turned into blackdene with a view to riding back long the side of hte hedge (we'd just been on the road on the other side of it) and down the side of that field and along back to the ford

no one had been riding that for a while and the grass etc was up to our (riders) feet, even on M who is a hand and more taller than Tilly....

between that and the flies it was all getting too much for him, and when we got to the place of soft going (it's a bog in winter) he started bucking... not hugely, but it would have been in due course...

safest option was dismount and lead, he was NOT a happy bunny and i should have known better (Gaynor has said that he's finding the long grass difficult - the flies on top were all too much)

TBH i shouldn't be surprised if the long grass was tickling his bits...

so had to walk back, being barged regularly ....

and oh my hip.... i know i'm not good for long walks anymore because of it, this was only about 3/4 mile or thereabouts, haven't measured it, but i do know about it!

when we got back, Tilly's rider sprayed M with her home made concoction - and the cloud of flies vanished like magic....

will be getting some of that, i think...