Day 5 - St Trinite to Aulan

Anne:- Dinner at Les Bayles turned out to be really good, the whole evening enhanced by the fact that we ate with 3 other cavaliers from near Poitiers ! OK dinner first:- This place serves only local produce, we started with an grapefruit aperitif, homemade of course with pickled mushrooms, followed by a starter of an omelette with local mushrooms, boletus I think. The main course was a very rich beef stew or "daube" as the French call it, with spelt grains as the vegetable, absolutely delicious ! Dessert of chocolate mousse cake, I can hardly wait for the next dinner. The other riders were up earlier than us, and already tacked up when we arrived to groom our guys. They trek one week in four, and were really well equipped, they carry everything with them, and were immaculately dressed for dinner, how do they do it ?. Impressive! We both loved the appaloosa , but all three horses were lovely.

Gigi especially loved this fella!

Finally we got tacked up and headed off, but we hadn't got very far when we heard a car sounding it's horn behind us. What could they want ? I had inadvertently dropped the spare Renegade boot I was carrying, $86 a piece. I couldn't thank them enough for having taken the trouble to find us!

We passed through the pretty village of St Trinit

St Trinit

St Trinit Eglise

Encountered a lot of very busy ants

We were traveling on a bridleway, and at a junction we came across a much welcome water fountain.

Water Fountain in the middle of nowhere

And this magnificent chair carved out of a tree stump.

Sometimes the signs for the bridleways can be difficult to spot

But the pathways are mostly wide and generous

And descending into the valley of Aurel we saw a magnificent red kite.

Approaching Aurel

Aurel

The small gardens were beautifully planted

Beautifully maintained houses in Aurel

There were great views all around us

And Gigi caught Flurry's habit of taking in the beauty

We think this fortification maybe marked the old boundary between France and Italy

And here the sky just blew our minds away

The bridleway took us up over the mountains and at the top we stopped for lunch and the horses had a well earned rest.

Finally we came to the end of the bridleway, this is a view of Reilhanette

Montbrun

Unfortunately we couldn't find the next track, and so we continued on the road for the rest of the day's trip to Aurel. Passing these lovely wild tulips on the way.

The horses had refused to drink at the fountain at Montbrun , it was just too scary, so they were delighted to get down to the river here. Where the water was crystal clear and fast flowing

And finally Aulan ! A total of 23.2 Km.

I want to say a huge thank you to the French for allowing horses such free access to their beautiful countryside , we travelled over 18K on horse tracks, NO traffic, well signposted for the best part, and water fountains along the way, we have equally beautiful countryside in Ireland, why can't we have the same rights of access ?

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Day 5, St Trinite to Aulan at EveryTrail
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