Tara Tuesdays – Part Nine

Although I'm away in Cornwall, I have been able to update my blog in a lovely cafe with internet access overlooking the beach.  I am actually looking at a very similar scene to the one described by Tara and her pony trekking!  The beach is in front of me and I'm surrounded by people in wet suits.  My view this morning:

Here is 'Tara Tuesdays Part Nine':

After having a lovely time with our friends Andy and Claire in Shropshire our next stop was Wales. We had arranged to meet up with Andy and Claire on the Saturday and Sunday of our stay here as they have a caravan not far from Porthmadog and we wanted to see more of them before we headed off to our next stop off. Andy being a familiar driver in Wales kindly planned a scenic route for us through Bala which was quite frightening, a sheer drop on one side of the road! I took it very slowly but we arrived at Arthog in one piece where we stayed at the Slate Shed. We were greeted with a much needed pot of tea and unpacked the Landy once again and went to our room which was beautiful - the photo below shows our view from where we had breakfast every morning!

We went for a short but steep walk as we were staying on the Mawdach trail and we had seen Julia Bradbury do her railway walks programme here too. We were going out for dinner that evening so we didn’t have as much time as we wanted but we still had a small explore. The camera’s SD card decided to die at this point too which caused us no end of problems later on. We had two tiny spare cards and it was a case of having to save pictures to the laptop every night and then delete which became a pain until we bought a new card!

Our hosts at the Slate Shed had recommended the 3 eateries that we went to during our time and I have to say we had some of the nicest food ever, the lamb was delish, I had proper (not out of a tin) corned beef too, absolutely gorgeous!

I had been looking forward to this part of our holiday SO much as we were staying very near to a Pony Trekking Centre and I had pre-booked a beach trek on the estuary. As the time had FINALLY come I was beside myself with excitement! We got to the Centre far too early and no-one was about although we could just see through one of the doors where I saw someone tacking up 2 horses. Eventually Sophie opened the door and I filled in the paperwork and went to meet my ride Della. She is a 10 (or 12) year old 14.2 hh grey part cob mare and she looked tiny compared to Bomber! I was SO lucky as it was just me on the trek!!!! FANTASTIC or what! I later found out that the group can be up to 28 people! I got onto Della and we headed down to the beach. Hubby was the chief photographer and did me proud with the shots and videos he got of me! He endured about a 6 mile trek to meet up with us too, bless him! What a top chap he is! I haven’t ridden out in the open since I first started riding when I was 9 years old so this in itself, and even before we got to the beach, was just perfect! Della was an absolute joy to ride, so responsive and unlike Bomber, this was a real treat for me. Sophie and I got on like a house on fire and chatted away like two old friends even though we had only just met! Her horse is called Bianca and she is almost 30 years old and quite feisty! We got to the beach and trotted IN THE SEA! And then we had a really long & fast canter across the beach! OH MY GOD, this was just my best riding experience EVER! We did another canter and then headed back to the Centre but also squeezed another one in on the way! All in all, the entire trek was 2 hours and really was worth the money. I want to go back to Wales SO much even if it is only to experience this again! I was on such a high for the rest of the time we were away and wanted to tell anyone who would listen about my experience! What a lucky, lucky girl I am! This will stay with me forever! Check out the state of my boots afterwards too!

We did tons more whilst we were here but I will save all that for next time!