Riding With Rosie

Riding With Rosie

By Meg Robbins

I am not a total novice when it comes to week long horse rides over exotic and demanding terrain. There was that trip three years ago when my friend Annemarie and I rode with a group over a hundred Spanish kilometers from coastal Zahara through the Alcornoles cork forests up 3500 foot mountains to tiny Jimena, on mostly sure-footed, romantically long-maned white Andalucian steeds. At one point Annemarie’s horse just sort of stopped, gave her a sour look and lay down but otherwise it was a fast week’s ride. We listened carefully to the instructions for navigating through fields of half ton toros; huge watchful bulls lying under shade trees. “Ride double file, don’t talk and if a bull charges, gallop like a mad bull is right behind you.” It was impressively hot and challenging but gorgeously wild and I loved it. I couldn’t wait to do it again.

Still, life intervenes (as do years and finances) and my next opportunity involved an end of summer week’s window when I would already be in balmy south coastal Devon and it seemed perfect sense to book a ride in the Scottish highlands. Weather forecasters were claiming this UK summer as the wettest on record but I put my faith in the good weather luck Tom and I quite frequently have in the UK. Preferring the sun but not really minding rain, I bought some waterproof, windproof miracle trousers, packed my blue velvet pony club approved safety helmet and headed north.

Having spent the last few days by the River Dart helping friends prepare for a huge housewarming party and then enthusiastically helping them celebrate into the early morning hours, I was happy to doze in the cab on the hour’s drive to tiny Exeter airport. Later, groggily sat on a small FlyBe Embrauer which spent more time on the runway waiting to fly than it did actually flying; the man seated next to me who spent the wait time violently folding and refolding the Daily Mail sports section, asked me that old chestnut of a conversation starter, “Where are you going?” Although my ultimate destination was Tomintoul, the highest village in Scotland, I cautiously answered, “Huntley” as the nearest small city. My seatmate, an off shore oil rig worker returning from his week’s break, darkly declared Huntley to be an evil place which could do with being blown up and that I should get psychiatric care if I thought otherwise. I figured right away that his ex-wife lived there and he said, yeah, his mother-in-law as well and I discovered a sudden and deep interest in my copy of the new Harry Potter.

The Glenlivet Ride I was joining in Tomintoul is one of the few remaining UK organized rides which international equestrian tours subscribe to. Insurance has skyrocketed in Great Britain, just as it has in the States, driving out many, many small trekking centers. As an American, riding in the UK, I am always quick to explain that I am not one of those Americans, quick to sue over a fall. One bad lawsuit and that’s often the end for a stable, even if the litigant is suing over a relatively minor accident caused by his or her own ineptitude. Of course Americans don’t hold the prize for being the most eager to sue—Britain’s own are enthusiastically adopting the practice. UK insurance companies have themselves been complicit in tripling or quadrupling the cost of a trekking stable’s insurance after a landmark case a few years ago created a precedent by declaring horses as unpredictable and therefore dangerous. This is of course, true, as it is with human beings, and no one who gets on a horse should think otherwise.

Still, lots of us like to get on horses, and enjoy the pure pleasure of exploring unfamiliar countryside with like-minded companions aboard well schooled, experienced horses. For me, it is all about escape as no one in my family likes to ride, so the week away is truly a week away. I ride abroad for the same reason I go walking abroad—it is at least 3000 miles away from real life, there are thousands of miles of well maintained bridle paths and it is always an adventure.

Having uneventfully reached Aberdeen airport, located the number 10 bus to Huntley and sat for an hour’s ride looking out the window listening to my hungry stomach grumble, we reached Huntley town square. I was arriving a day late to the scheduled ride, due to the demands of the Devon party, and Rosie, who runs the ride, had generously offered to have her partner Sean pick me up at the bus stop as she would be out with the others on day one.

Wearing my laptop backpack, and carrying a small duffel, I could not wrestle my suitcase out of the luggage bin in the front of the bus. It was stuck. I yanked. The driver offered no assistance and people behind me were getting annoyed as I blocked their exit. A lanky, curly headed man casually unfurled himself from a telephone pole and, sincerely hoping this was Sean and not someone who had his getaway car idling nearby, I tossed my duffle down to him, then my backpack and finally the recalcitrant suitcase. Fortunately it was Sean to the rescue, who helped me drag my stuff to his Ka. I’m not misspelling it either—it really was a Ka, a teeny tiny Ford which Sean and Rosie had on loan from the garage while theirs was being repaired. This Ka had room for me, my suitcase, the duffel and my backpack but Sean had to drive with his knees on the dashboard. Fortunately, or unfortunately there was little traffic on the 45 minute ride, and Sean did his best to turn that 45 minutes into 30. Having lived all his life not far from Tomintoul, he knew the landmarks, pointing out a small round mountain as we came into the Glenlivet Estate road as one he often used as a hang gliding launch. Sean worked several jobs (“We all do around here,” he told me proudly) most of which involved heights.

Trundling through the village of Tomintoul, Sean bumped the Ka down a dirt lane (“Must repair those holes”) into a broad green valley with grazing horses to either side. Sean’s directions were to deliver me to St Bridgid’s Farm where he hoped Rosie and the Ride would be back from their day out. St. Brigid’s had once been home to Jacobite war rebels but right now it looked like—a farmhouse. Sean spent a lot of time fixing the barns. Pulling up near the ancient stone cottage and barns, the Ka reluctantly allowed us to get out. The Ride were not only back, they were seated in the stable yard on folding canvas chairs in what I learned was the daily post-ride circle, drinking tea and Nescafe and, I was thrilled to note, eating biscuits. Feeling a little out of place in my chinos and city shoes when everyone else was wearing muddy boots, breeches and helmets, I was quickly seated, handed a cup of tea and a cat, and introduced by Rosie to Guido, Dagmar and Ursula who were on the same ride with me, and two others who were just along for the day.

Everyone looked curious when it became quickly apparent that I was American. Rosie contracted with Swedish and German international tour companies to bring her riders and although my agency was Canadian, it was affiliated with the German company and seldom sent recruits from the states. Nevertheless they enthusiastically told me about their ride that day, we drank our tea and no one seemed bothered that one of Rosie’s spaniels and I ate most of the biscuits. Rosie gave me a long and considered look and asked me, if I could choose, what exact sort of horse would I want to ride for the week. Having given this one a lot of thought I was quick to respond. I wanted a sensible, forward-going Mrs. Brown- type Highland pony who would be happy daydreaming with me at the back of the pack. I didn’t want an antsy horse who required a lot of attention nor did I want a horse who needed a lot of encouragement. Rosie nodded. Once the last biscuit was sadly gone, the riders went to attend to their mounts who were tied to rings from the barn walls impatiently licking the last oat from their feed buckets.

Rosie took me off to show me the ropes. Speaking gently but firmly, she explained the way things were done at St Brigid’s where we would be responsible for safely and expertly grooming and tacking our horses every day. Each horse would wear a halter under its bridle, with a lead rope knotted around its neck to be used for tying them when we stopped for lunch. Baling twine lengths went in our pockets for this purpose as well as to be used to secure jackets or rainwear to D rings on the pommel of the saddle. Horses coming in from the fields needed to be de-mudded and brushed, hooves picked out and forelegs stretched forward after the girths were tightened in order to avoid wrinkle sores. On our return every day, bridles were to be removed, girths slightly loosened and saddles left on for at least ten minutes while horses were fed, as this too reduced saddle sores by allowing capillaries under pressure from girth and rider, to gently expand. We were to wash bits, de-hair saddle pads and brush sweat marks off our horses but not get too bothered about it as they would all be ponied out to fields throughout the village where they would have a good, muddy roll.

Sean and the Ka rattled me and my bags the half mile back to the three star Gordon Hotel on the Tomintoul square, where all riders were booked in for the week. Everyone else walked. The Gordon is a typical Highland hotel with a decidedly atypical non-Highland staff. Victim of a recent shift in ownership from local to chain, most of the staff who had worked there for years had left, leaving it prey to international summer workers. A Mr. Bean look alike checked me in, handed me my huge room key and watched me clump my way to the second floor where my bags and I bounced down the hall, through the smoky little corridor with the glass fire doors and the big no smoking sign, around the corner and into my home for the week. Like most Scottish hotels this one boasted its share of stag themed paintings, plaid curtains, plaid carpets and plaid furniture. A plaid blanketed single bed in a small room, I was very happy to see that mine also had a very large bathroom with a very large bath tub, my single requisite if I am going to be spending my day out on the range.

We took two meals a day at The Gordon, included in the ride fee. Breakfast was always interesting (porridge, black pudding, local bacon and eggs) and served by a trainee entrepeneur from Istanbul. I like black pudding but it’s presence every morning was a little scary Dinner was almost anything off the menu but scallops. Our dinner host was sometimes Mr. Bean and sometimes a young, garrulous Australian Goth. His friend worked the bar. Lunches (dry white bread cheese sandwiches, juice box, crisps) were packed for us to pick up as we headed out each morning. The hotel had wireless internet accessible on the ground floor but it took a long session with the techy chef to format my laptop. He told me that, in this, the highest, if not the smallest, village in Scotland, they had to be very, very careful about hackers. I used Skype to call home and wished I hadn’t as all was chaos. Still, after heeding the call by my German companions to sample a little single malt at the pub on the square, I slept well.