post thirty-one: horse

Last Friday, I got on a horse for the first time in about, well, nearly twenty one years.

My German flatmate, who is a riding instructor back in Germany at the weekends, managed to persuade to go with her to a local stable with a group of her friends, only one of whom I had met before. Reluctantly agreeing, I found myself sandwiched in between two people in the back of a Peugeot on the way to Omassa, a village not far from Corte. Chatting away happily in a language that I should really be fluent in by now, I managed to work out that I wasn't the only beginner; in fact, my German flatmate was the only person who had actually been anywhere near a horse.

So, we arrived at the stables. A woman met us, introduced us to some horses that were in the stable block, and then proceeded to tell us that all of the horses that we would be riding were in a field. Twenty minutes walk away.

An hour and a half later, we returned to the main stable area, having had to bribe the bloody animals with bits of whatever we had in our pockets. My horse, aptly named 'Mobidic' (and he literally was the size of a whale) was also stopping to eat the grass along the way.

We groomed them and I even managed to put the saddle on without too much trouble. I did have a slight panic attack over the bridle ('You want me to put my fingers where?!!') but we managed to get them into the little sandy arena without too much more effort.

Them came the next challenge: we had to mount the buggers. My flatmate and two others managed to get on theirs without a hassle: I had a major problem. Not only did I have the largest and fattest carthorse ever, I also am a bit restricted in my leg movements ever since I got pulled out a great lump of metal that used to be my car. After a few (French) words of encouragement, and several leg-ups, I managed to get on Mobi. My legs by this point, having run around a field with a halter as well, were feeling the stretch.

We trotted around the menage for a bit, getting used to the feel of our horses. Mobi seemed only to have two speeds; Dead Slow, and Stop. The cries of 'Allez, Jim!' (The French just cannot pronounce my name, so I'm either Jim or Jamaica). Then came crunch time: We were taken on a 'balade': or a 'hack' in English. Bearing in mind that I can just about scrape by in everyday French, trying to understand how to ride a horse through water without it rolling over with proving to be more difficult...