What a Hack!

How is it possible to be so elated and yet so frustrated at the same time?

I'll explain...

We had the most fantastic hack today.  Weeks ago, way back even before I broke my wrist, I went exploring on foot and found a lovely trail up through some woods to the North of Céreste.  I couldn't wait to ride up there, but at that stage, we were still hampered with the wraps on GiGi's front feet, so we were limited to short hacks only.  We talked about boxing the horses over there, and then CRUNCH, we all know what happened next!

Finally, nine weeks later, we got to ride our horses up through the woods and it was FANTASTIC!  We rode up past the little tree-topped tor that I had seen the very first time I was there, and investigated a couple of trails which seemed to lead somewhere but eventually petered out.

"My" little tor!

GiGi and Anne following up the trail, Luberon Massif in the background

One of the trails that petered out

We back-tracked and continued up to where the cliffs drop away to the valley of the Calavon river.  Just across the valley is the pretty town of Viens - that's another place I want to ride, there is a circular horse trail marked on our map which I want to do.

Flurry admiring the view towards Viens

We rode along the top of the cliffs, through a pine forest.  All of a sudden, we left the uneven, stony tracks behind, and found ourselves on a soft, level trail, carpeted with pine needles.  We trotted and cantered along for about a kilometer, with the horses loving every minute of it!  GiGi had been very lazy until our first canter - when she saw Flurry strike off ahead of her, she threw her head into the air and cantered enthusiastically after him, and stayed quite "forward" from then on.

The horses weren't the only ones enjoying it!  I was beaming from ear to ear as we cantered along - if it was any later in the year, I would have had fly-splatter across my teeth by the time we stopped!  I've been waiting a long time for this!

Hiding the fly-splatter?  No, eating a toffee Carambar!

Eventually, the trail started to descend again, and we decided to dismount and walk for a bit, mostly to give our legs something different to do, but also to give the horses a break. What a wise decision!  The trail became very steep, very quickly, and we carefully made our way down, Flurry obediently following alongside me.  At the very start, GiGi was more concerned about scratching her head against Anne than where she was putting her feet, but after about 50M of serious scrambling descent, she seemed to realise that she should pay attention and was much better behaved.

Looking at the map afterwards, we could see that the trail dropped 300M in about 400M - I think that qualifies as steep!

Eventually, the trail leveled out and we reached a road.  We were pretty sure we knew where we were and thankfully we were right!  We came out near the Prieurie de Carluc, familiar territory to both us and the horses.

We arrived back in La Florentine shortly after six - just over three hours after we left - tired but very happy!

So why the frustration?  If I hadn't broken my wrist, we would have done this hack weeks ago.  By now, we would have ridden along the top of the Luberon, trekked via Montfuron to Pierrevert in the valley on the other side of the Luberon, followed the trail along the top of the Gorge d'Oppedette and explored the horse trails around Viens and "Colorado de Provence" at Rustrel.

Today was Anne's last ride before she leaves to drop the car and the dogs home.  When she comes back, we'll have just three days riding locally before we leave to start Le Big Trek.  There are just so many wonderful places we won't get to, so many trips we won't do.

Yes, we're frustrated.

PS.  Here's the Everytrail map.  I'm going to have to tweak my settings again, it's not sampling frequently enough now.

Ride through the bois at EveryTrail
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