Pictures courtesy of John Stones

Well we have kicked off the autumn escorted rides with a flair, and have enjoyed 2 lovely rides so far with some more to come. The weather has been good to us although Inkberrow did get us a bit damp but on the whole we had a great ride from our PPR point.

Both rides were fully booked and all riders enjoyed themselves, especially Lesley Welch wbra treasurer who is new to hacking out in a group and she is coming on great with her horse Just Five.

We all met at the located PPR point where there is loads of parking and got ready to ride, part of this ride takes in the new wbra Horseshoe Route, so that was nice for the riders to see part of the journey. we headed out towards Feckenham, before turning back up towards Cruise Hill and then back again towards Feckenham village and back down lovely quiet lanes back to our vehicles.

All the tracks were good and there are only 4 gates on the whole route to negotiate, which is great, even though i did nearly managed to do myself an injury trying to climb back on Mac from a 5 bar gate, which is normally no problem at all, but on this occassion it was very tricky due to the fact that Mac wanted to eat the trees.

Julie Spicer's horse who is an ex polo pony was excellent and took everything in his stride, Sue and Basil and Alison and Tig old familiars now !! hehe also jumped at the chance to ride from Hanbury. There is one nice feature over this ride and that is that you can cross a small stream nr Feckenham and if you like can take them for a deep paddle down stream before turning and making your way.

Sorry we don't have any pics of this escorted ride, but we were to busy chatting....

This ride is perhaps one of my favorites when the weather is better and when the corn has just been cut, I had arranged this ride perhaps a little too late in the season and totally forgot that it was agricutural land for the first half.

As we all gathered for the off the rain (that very fine stuff) didin't really seem to be stopping so I adoned my waterproofs and we all rode out down the private track from the PPR to join up with direct access onto the bridleways. We rode around the headland which was being fertalised etc as we rode, two tractors were working like demon's but none of the horses were in the slightest bit bothered.

As i said abouve this was agri land and had been ploughed and turned and was slightly heavy under hoof but not deep and sinking, so we were ok to carry on, eventually we left the worked fields to join up with the bridleways tracks which on the whole were really good, a couple of boggy patches but nothing the horses didn't mind to much.

We progressed through to join up with more quiet lanes and then doubled back parallel to where we had already rode making a big loop, as we rode back negotiating gates of all various types we didn't really notice the soft rain. We eventually came back across fields to join up with the field joining on to the private track and here we saw Barbara Stones husband with camera in hand ready to take out pics, unfortuantly Lesley had dismounted for a stretch, even though she says' she was thinking of five (not used to two hrs in the saddle)!!!!

After sorting all the steeds out and putting them away we all had a chat and refreshment before off home, another enjoyable ride in good company even though slightly cold and damp.