Sunday, May 16, 2004

Riding with my grooms

Moving into May and Egypt decided to bless us with one of those breezy, clear, cool mornings that are so lovely as summer approaches. One of the older grooms at the country club near me has been helping to excercise my horses and has also been teaching the boys who work for me to ride, so I took Wednesday to ride with the three of them to check out their progress. I've been telling them about the trails that I've found and how they go all the way to the ring road from the back door of my land. I suspect that they didn't really believe me but we went to the highway and they saw for themselves.

We ambled along trails and dirt roads while I watched how they handled the horses and then we picked up the pace to trots and long canters. Lovely time and the boys had a ball playing with the horses that they usually are caring for. The looks on some of the farmers' faces were priceless to see these three young men riding along trails in the countryside with a foreign woman, especially as we were whooping it up along the dirt roads.

On the way back we took a short cut on a trail through some fields behind my paddocks and passed a farmer standing out in the middle of a berseem field under a lovely sky blue umbrella. With his white scarf wrapped around his head and a dark grey galabeya, he looked like a bit of thunder cloud that had somehow gotten lost and come to rest in the field. I wish I'd had a camera on me.