Phillhope Brig

Its always nice and quiet where we park the trailers and unload the horses, enough time for a photo shoot!

Photo by Fieron

Here is a short video of all the horses arriving on our hill top at Greenbanks after they had ridden up hill mostly for around 6 miles. They are slowing down as there is a small road and gate crossing just behind where we were standing.
Sorry, had to stop the video abruptly as Granda needed help to re-attach his stirrup again before galloping off?

Our farm is made up of two hill tops, off they go into the distance again over Burnfoot Hill, this is the highest point of the ride after this from here on in to Philhope Brig it's mostly down hill. Again we had torrential rain this week and the ground is sodden. The route of the ride was changed a fair bit but this hill top can withstand a bit of pounding from the horses.  It's a bit tricky to ride downhill over the steep slippy slopes and apparently there were a few fallers as the horses feet slid away from them travelling downhill over the next farm back down into the valley.

 

Our Picnik spot for today is Philhope Brig about 4 miles up the valley from our farm where family and friends are waiting in the cold and wind for the horses to arrive it was only about 5/6 degrees celsius here today.

Washing the horses off in the stream.

After the picnik we went home to get Fieron and Rosie ready for their ride, this time we dropped her off so that she had a longer ride into town, about 2 1/2 miles!

This ride is usually about 26 miles but because there had been so much rain, the ground was sodden and the rivers were flooded and too high to cross the routes were changed so the ride may have been a bit shorter.

Back into town safe and sound!