Author: Sandy Gorman
It’s not always about us members. We love our weekends away, no doubt. But we also like to share the trails with like minded riders and for the September weekend we had a guest along too!
Neish out on the trail with Sandy, Lee & Brian
I arrived early enough on Friday to get on the mower to tidy up the obstacle course area. I’m in love with my smart glasses – not just for the videos I can get while riding, but I can sit on the mower and chat to a friend, even under the ear muffs! Beats working, and pretty cool to boot! Mowing done, time to chill out and wait for the rest of the crew to arrive. We had Brian and Kaye, our guest and Lee all arriving Friday, with Martin dropping down for dinner. Saturday’s planned ride was to Trawool to find the “ruins” I’d seen marked on the map. Ruins of what? Only one way to find out. Brian, Lee, Neish and I floated up to Army camp to head out. The weather was fine, sun shining, warm, but cool in the shade. Idaho started out a little spicy and was not impressed to be kept to the back. The tracks were a little washed out; but we enjoyed navigating through the crap bits, with trots and canters on the nicer tracks. Being at the back meant it was great to get some videos with the aforementioned glasses! Map reading mastered, we found the “ruins”. Wow. A bit of a let down really. Some rusty tin, a few bits of wood. A shot up old esky. We’ve found more interesting dumped cars up there in the hills. Dreams of a lunch time stop exploring said ruins shattered, we chose to continue on to Freemans Camp for our lunch stop. It was a nice track between the ruins and the lunch stop, with a few low logs to pop the ponies over. A relaxing lunch with my incredibly sweaty pony having the chance to calm himself and chill before deciding to extend our ride around the back side of Main Road before heading back to the floats. Some parts of the tracks this side were boggy and a four wheel drivers dream – but wiser to take the ponies around rather than through. “The journey is the destination” – and since our original destination was a bit blah, the journey was the main attraction!
This looks a bit too luxurious during the lunch break
Loaded up and slowly making our way back down the dusty hill, we got back to the club house and caught up with our chef and cleaners Nicole and Adam, with Kylie rocking in shortly after us.
A few drinks, yummy build-your-burger dinner with a very tall dessert and great conversation topped off a great day.
After a massive breakfast, Sunday’s planned ride was to the Flowerdale Pub. We again had four riders, but Brian and Lee opted out (they chose working at the clubhouse over ponies???!! – but the results of their labours was A-MAZ-ing, so we can’t begrudge them). Nicole and Kylie opted in with Neish and I riding. We’d dropped Neish’s float at the pub, Nicole also choosing one way with Adam meeting us for lunch with their float. Kylie and I were doing both ways…
It was a very relaxed ride. Again, the weather was perfect, and the ponies were all very well behaved. Nic’s first ride on her new boy Wilson and after initial excitement he settled beautifully. We all walked, trotted, loped, cantered like we had all the time in the world and made a long trip of it. I’d managed to get something in my eye (at least it sure felt like it!) and as the ride wore on, it was grinding! By the time we made the pub I was over it and not looking forward to another 15 k’s back. Over lunch, Kylie and I decided to scrap the idea of riding back and with Adam’s assistance managed to sort ponies/floats so that we could all head home from the pub. I’m sure all the girls would rate Sunday’s ride as amazing; me on the other hand ended up in too much pain to balance the good with the bad favourably!
Enough sooking from me though.
It really was a great weekend, yet again. Brian Kaye and Lee worked tirelessly Sunday to finish off the yards, whipper snip and clean up. Anyone interested in coming to mine….