Slightly longer than planned hack..

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Brychen

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Aug 11, 2002
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My other half looked after my son today so I could have a lovely long hack in the sunshine. the plan was to go along the pennine bridle path from the yard to Arnfield reservoir and maybe pick up the longandale trail.

What actually happened was we did the pennine bridle path iup past a resevoir and over the grouse moor to Tintiwstle and rode around and across a bridge at longandale resevoir and picked up the longandale trail, rode along the valley bottom along the fab trail which has a hard surface for bikes and pedestrians and a turfed ride seperated by a ditch for horse riders how fab is that! it took us about 1/2 to 3/4 hour to go up the trail about 3 miles and 10 minutes to gallop back! We were both so over excited that we missed our turn off and ended up nearly in Padfield which is a village at one end of the trail.

As the traffic looked horrendous we tracked back to the turn off and retraced our steps. it was fab the only road crossing has a pegasus horse traffic lights . I got back to the yard at 14.30 having set of at 9.00. Lovely scenery on the route and fab weather. I felt quite pleased that there is still life in my old boy at 19 but thought we had taken quite long to do about 13 miles , but is it very hilly. Husband measured the route on my os map when I got home - oops we had done about 14 to 25 miles taking our detour into account.....

Starting to wonder if I should retry endurance but I dont want to push a 19 year old horse to make the set times. Maybe I will aim for some nice pleasure rides.

I will try and post photos later - to give people who dont know this lovely but much overlooked area of the country, the dams are where they filmed the dam busters!!! Quite amazing that I am in 35 minutes commute of central manchester.
 
sounds idyllic :D we've had rain all day today:mad: Went on a riding holiday in Spain a few years ago and one of their horses was 20 and she was doing 20km a day no problem they did say they were going to retire her the next year to a hacking home but she didn't struggle with the rides at all ! I sometimes think people under estimate the capabilites of slightly older horses !
 
Think Im a bit slower than you - seven miles took me about three hours the other day! But there were 13 gates to open and I did get off to sit in the sun for a while at the top of the Downs. Plus - ditto, very hilly. What sort of average speeds do novice endurance riders aim to do then?
 
Hi

My ride also had numerous gates as the pennine bridle way seems to breed them. I have to get off and on at each one as pony always trys to push open ones that open towards you and generally 'help'!

I think that novice speed is 6 mph for Endurance GB. I am tempted to try some novice 20s as my pony hasnt competed for so long that he is eligible to go back to novice!
 
Is that part of the Mary Townley loop? I keep meaning to venture further afield and try some other parts of it - currently been sticking to the same couple of routes where I know there's easy parking nearby for the box. Would be nice to see some other bits of it though, especially if the scenery from the part I know is anything to go by :)
 
Im at the other end between Stalybridge and Saddleworth. Lovely riding area and tonnes of bridle paths and what looks like roads on the map but have turned out to be rough tracks. keep pinching myself in case its a dream!
 
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