Spring Stroll

Thought I could have them instead of Winter Walks – what do you reckon? 😉

Yesterday we met up with Julie, Jack and Maisie this morning at the stables for a Honey riding session. It was a beautiful day, really mild, sunny and still. The bridleways and woodland were full of daffodils, violets, snowdrops. The children played around the farm while Julie got Honey ready although Scarlett came over to have a go at grooming her, fed her some carrots and came over to watch Julie cleaning out Honey’s hoofs and also to see when her chestnuts fell off (and if you have no idea what that is, don’t feel bad cos I didn’t either!).

Davies rode first, again really enjoyed it and learnt a bit more about various things while he was riding

Maisie had next ride so Davies, Scarlett and Jack enjoyed running and playing in the woods while Julie and I walked alongside Honey and Maisie. Davies found some very interesting looking fungi

Then it was Tarly’s turn. Now if Davies loves riding Honey then Scarlett LOVES riding Honey, check out the smile on this child’s face

also check out the fact that she is riding ‘with no hands’. She started doing this mid-walk and was balancing up and down hill, while Honey went over logs and holding her arms out to the side. I was not remotely surprised as if Scarlett was going to be into horse riding then it was always more likely to be dare devil stunt riding where she went bare back on wild mustangs and did handstands on their backs than perfectly groomed gymkhana stuff with braided manes and shiny riding boots :lol:. Julie said that actually riding with no hands is a very important part of learning to ride a horse and getting your balance and centre of gravity in line with the horse’s though and was very impressed with Scarlett. :).

Once back at the stables Davies spent some time clambering on straw bales and muck heaps


before coming to give Julie a hand with muck shovelling in Honey’s paddock

While Tarly disappeared and with the aid of camera zoom I was able to find her spending some time with a new lamb in it’s little enclosure

They really do love it there, the whole package; the animals, the freedom, the variety of things to explore and just the being outside. 🙂

We came home listening to a Mika version of the Police song ‘Can’t stand losing you’ so we talked a bit about suicide and why losing someone you loved might make you feel sucidal and why so many songs are written about sad things. Home for lunch and what must have been about the fourth viewing of Little Shop of Horrors in the last couple of days. When we got home we moved a mattress downstairs. Davies sleeps, Princess and the pea stylee, on two mattresses. Just because someone gave us a spare single bed last year which we kept for accomodating guests for Davies’ party weekend and then got rid of the bed base but kept the mattress as it might be useful. I told Davies and Scarlett about a school trip to France when I was 13 where we’d slept in groups of four in little self contained chalets – two storey with one two bed room on the ground floor and one on the first floor, with a little bathroom in the entrance hall. By fluke I’d been in with some of the ‘cool’ girls that year and had ended up sharing with my best friend Emma and two of the wildest girls in our year – Julie and Paula. We worked out that our staircase was the exact same width as the mattresses and the exact same length as two of them end to end, so put two on the stairs and converted it into a slide. We’d later worked out we could climb out of the shuttered windows and Paula had improved Anglo-French relations in all sorts of ways with some local lads but I didn’t share that bit of the anecdote!

So we put one of Davies’ mattresses on our stairs and although it was slightly too wide it did make a very effective slide that we played on for a while 😆

The shopping arrived, as blogged below and then after tea I took Davies and Scarlett off to Badgers. They made bird food in yogurt pots – our tree is rather groaning under the weight of bird food in yoghurt pots to be honest so I think the bantams might be the recipients of this batch. Lovely to see how accepted Scarlett is into the Badger group of children after just half a term. And even more lovely was on the way out when I started talking about where Scarlett was going to sleep and she wanted to sleep in Davies’ room and he put his arm round her as they walked down the steps together. Bless!

While I’d been sat in the car (in the cold and the dark, playing DS and then reading some of my book) I’d had a phone call from Ady to say that he wouldn’t be staying away from home after all. This threw all the evening plans, not to mention sleeping arrangements out the window, but it all worked out ok in the end.

Davies, Scarlett and I went to collect Ali and Freya from the station and Ady had just beaten us home and took charge of settling children in bedrooms watching dvds, inflating air beds (not quite enough!) and providing just the right level of input into Ali and I’s conversation and then buggering off to bed so we could carry on afterwards. 😆 We had a very pleasant evening with pizza, snacks, wine, chatter and chocolate :).