Another weekend of adventures!

Last weekend, Mark, Michelle and Jakob arrived. We had a quiet Friday night together and headed for the beach on Saturday morning with the horses.

 Charlie was too sore so Jakob rode Jet again and spent some time getting him back into the water. This time he remained on his feet!

 Twinkle and I are getting along fine....most of the time. She is quite different to ride and certainly has her own way of doing things. She is quite a 'hot' type and can get a bit fizzy. I believe she has always gone everywhere at top speed from what her previous owner has told us about her.

 Jakob had a blast playing with Jet on the beach. He had him running along behind him, rode him backwards and then decided he needed to show us how he can stand up on him too.

 Jet loves Jakob. He does have a definite affinity with horses.  We had some news on Jets past the day prior to this so now have a plan on what we need to work on with him.

Later that day, we packed up the horses and headed towards Te Aroha to spend the night camping at the start of Thompson"s Track. It's an old stock route that crosses the Kaimai ranges and ends up at Katikati.

The wind roared and there were some heavy downpours of rain. It's rained a lot up there in the past couple of weeks. In hindsight, we should have pulled the plug and gone home but hey, once daylight came, it didn't seem too bad!

We hadn't long got on the horses when the top came out of a tree across the paddock from us but we carried on. Riding to the summit was pleasant. It was quite sheltered in the bush and we were beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about.

Then we came across the first of the mud holes. We all negotiated that fine, but the slip not far along was too much for Michelle's Duke and they went down in the mud. Brave Michelle climbed back on and we continued on to the hole in the picture below.

The off roaders play on the track and the bigger the holes, the better they like it. Not long after this though, Michelle wanted to go home so we all turned back. It was the smart decision as it was only going to get worse. A couple of the men rode through the slips and holes on the way back, but I got off and let Twinkle find her own way through while I tip toes round the side. She is proving to be one very good wee pony.

Our horses were all quite tired and so were we. Mark is talking about next time and has a plan of attack formed.
I think we will make it at the end of Summer................it's taken a week to return all the gear to some sort of clean!