It's that time of year when hitting the beach is one of my favourite past times. Must be the weather for it!

I guess during the summer it's a drive too far and the days are too full of other more constructive activities. I do like the young horses to go to the beach a couple of times because they usually get to see a string or two of racehorses and they get to experience wide open nothingness which I guess surprises a lot of modern day domesticated horses so used to having close boundaries and near horizons.

So Stephanie kindly offered to come down to the beach with me and ride Roger to accompany me on Charlie.We had a trial run at this in November with Rog and Turnip at Deauville, Steph came to a dressage competition to help me out and we were rewarded for our early morning efforts by a beautiful sunny ride on the beach afterwards with glorious blue skies and seas.


It was rather disappointing then that we rocked up to such dense fog at the beach near Avranches, this is Steph obviously surprised at the apparent disappearance of the Mont st. Michel.


Fog aside it all went rather, better than I had dared hope, Charlie has had a busy week of Haras du Pin and forest rides and since he's not very well travelled he has been getting progressively more excited as each new adventure unravels itself. So by the time we arrived at the beach having driven past lathered trotters bouncing their gigs and racehorses wending their way back from the beach he was in a little lather over all these possible women or possible 'scenarios' with women.

Lady luck smiled kindly on us for once and I managed to get away with an hour's activity on the beach and in the dune sand track without him laying eyes on another horse.

Steph seemed really to have found her feet with Roger too, while he wasn't bad he does enjoy the beach so it prompted a lot of squeeks, shimmies and bounces which Steph quietly rode whilst having the confidence to have his head a little to enjoy his feedom.



The only shaky moment came minutes after I had been discussing the case of a horse caught in the quick sand in Australia. The bay of Mont st Michel is reknowned for 'les gallops' ,it's galloping trapping tides( it's such a huge shallow bay) aswell as it's quicksands so I'm always pretty cautious down there to follow the tracks other horses have obviously taken.

I had seen just this week that a woman and her daughter had been riding on the beach at Geelong in Australia when her horse had suddenly sunk into the sand followed by her daughter on her horse. She had immediately left her own horse and gone to her daughter's aid extracting both daughter and daughter's horse before returning to her own horse. Her efforts to dig her own horse from the sand only succeeded in making him stick faster and sink deeper so her daughter called for help and a terrifying three hours later they managed to pull the sedated and exhausted horse from the sand with a tractor. Pretty little arab it was , must have been breaking her heart watching the poor buggar thrashing about in attempt to pull himself free.


Tempting fate I was happily recounting this tale to Stephanie saying how it had served to reinforce my fear of the beach at Mont st. Michel when all of a sudden Charlie completeley disappeared beneath me, as if his legs had given way he collapsed on to his belly. I screamed and jumped off imagining he might be going under only to realise Charlie had been overcome by the crushingly immediate need to have a roll. With much hollering, gesticulating and relief he was rapidly dissuaded from squashing my saddle.

Now I should have been a little sharper to the likelihood of him doing this as he has attempted it with me once before in the woods and it is not uncommon for him to be drop to the ground as if shot when you're leading him down the garden , it's always after a ride when he's been untacked and is overcome by an itch that needs urgent treatment.


Anyhow Charlie got his roll in the end, as you can see by his happy ,smiling, sand covered face and furthermore we got him back in the trailer only moments before a ' possssible woman' appeared around the corner.