White Horse Pilgrim

Apples

Without a horse to ride I must resort to mere machines for recreation. Thus it is back to cycling - though with little complaint for this is a part of my history.

There are apple trees by the cycle track. I made a trip to fill pannier bags and a rucksack with apples. Then, as there were very many apples and no-one else seems to collect them, I made a second trip.

Clearly the economic situation cannot be so very bad. If it was then people would take these free apples for themselves, not for a pampered horse.

I put some apples in Doru's feed. Others I threw out across his pasture so that he may wander about and find them. And that is what he did, walking about and playing the apple game. That's an Autumn favourite where he walks around happily in search of healthy snacks, his busy muzzle oozing copious green slobber.

Yesterday Doru's buckskin neighbour pulled down the fence and the roan beast slipped across. The two were perfectly happy, I am told, grazing side by side. That isn't a surprise as he has lived out with geldings before. But it is a matter for hope. Perhaps soon Doru may be happy living out in retirement with Larynn's gelding Josh? He does seem to appreciate a good equine companion.

Not horses but...

I recovered my two bicycles from storage today. Here they are, carrying the dust of an immobile decade. Barring a few scratches, they are much as I left them. One needs only new tyres and inner tubes to be rendered fully rideable. The other needs a little additional work, replacing a worn out saddle and lighting dynamo. These tasks will take me a morning at most. I know them well, as I built the two from components in the early 1990's.

These bicycles were very much part of my life before I moved abroad. I used to ride them to the stable, to go shopping, and for recreation. For several years, I used to cycle to work too. So, getting them back into running order helps me to reclaim my old life, to regain part of what I sacrificed when I moved to Eastern Europe.

The local authority has been busy creating cycle routes over the past decade, and there is now quite a good network of routes that are largely traffic-free. I can cycle the ten miles to the stable using a mixture of old railway route, farm track and country lane, a route also used by a surprising number of local people commuting to work by bicycle. I can also cycle on the Ridgeway and elsewhere, in dry weather anyway, as many non-motor rights of way are open to cyclists and horse riders as well as to walkers.