.....branching out

Then came the time when we were ready to hit the road. There was little chance of us building up to a small amount of traffic and a tranquil environment, as his field is right next to the only road in and out of our village. I believe it is classed as semi-rural. Unfortunately, and I know most fellow horseriders will sympathise with this, semi-rural inhabitants drive like some terrifying Michael Schumacher/Jeremy Clarkson hybrid from hell. My only thinking is that they see horses on such a regular basis that the become blase and stop seeing them at all. Either that or they are all busier than a jeweller on valentines day and couldnt possibly slow down by 20 miles an hour for 100 yards while they pass you. I have had one rather unnerving experience when a woman came so close to me in her car that I actually kicked her back passenger window without taking my foot out of the stirrup. Best of all, she couldnt for the life of her understand why I was mad! Anyway, I digress. So I tacked Blue up in our now familiar routine of me tightening his girth, him biting me, me shouting at him, him looking wounded/disgruntled/disgusted with me, me questioning why I bought such a miserable nag, him questioning how he was so unfortunate as to end up with a slave driver such as me. I slapped on our brand new out of the bag reflective gear and off we went! Naturally the first piece of traffic we meet is an A reg, wheezing, 10mph horsebox, the type which is given a name by the owner (along the lines of Betsy, you know the type I mean) and has done in the region of 400,000 miles. Luckily it coughed and spluttered its way past us without incident and I thought we'd had our second Eureka moment. Thinking back to our first hack out he was again very well behaved and at that point I was baffled as to why he hadnt been ridden for so long. I have yet to mention the post sale story which emerged of actually the original owner had been too scared to ride him in the 2 years she'd owned him, and after a little investigation I found that every person I mentioned him to said "oh, so YOU'VE got Blue have you?" in a more than dubious tone. He is indeed famous around these parts, like a sort of rodeo legend of old. In an ironic twist, I also found that she had bought him to ride western. A less western horse you never did see and it gave me a little insight into her mindset. Needless to say he never embarked on his illustrious career as cattle herder, thankfully. Aside from anything else, he is frightened of cows. Along with sheep, plastic bags, crisp packets, dogs, bikes, children, footballs, kerbs, drains, bushes, other horses, old people, scooters, mud (seriously), birds, water, sand, concrete posts, grass if its at the wrong angle.....you get my drift.