I ventured out to a Sport Endurance social ride where they had a loop of 12miles but had said that if you set off early you could go around twice. This was perfect for us, I wasn’t going to be able to get to any more rides where Estrid could get used to a venue atmosphere with my work schedule so we treated this like a graded ride and planned to do 40km with a little crew/vet gate stop between our loops.
The venue, route, marking and general atmosphere was lovely! Lots of great grassy stretches, a couple of small hills, plenty of suburban-ish tracks through a lovely nature reserve.
Estrid flew around, it didn’t even feel like 40km. The sun was shining and we had a great time. She’s still funny about passing other horses, she doesn’t want to stay with them but she loses her nerve just before her nose overtakes and backs off , and she was an absolute fruit loop at the venue, pacing around and whinnying at anything that moved. But we still had a lovely time and to top it off we got an easter egg with our rosette!
Beth Endurance 