Day 3 was 7 hours of riding a range of Irish landscape. We were so tired last night, we dropped into bed after showers and dinner and slept like logs for ten hours. Beautiful, adventurous, long day.

Breakfast at the “McCourts”—who’d been out to 2:30am celebrating himself’s birthday. We heard from Manfred that he’d been “pissed” before he came home and very drunk before the end of the night. The hostess looked exhausted and Patrick, the second boy who was obviously in need of attention, hung around at breakfast and followed us to help with the horses until he had to go to school. Did I mention the Shetland pony locked in the shed for founder? And the three dogs, looking for attention? I suppose you could consider this a cultural experience....

Our boys, on the other hand, were full of life and ready to go. We had tried to get going early since we knew we had a long day, plus we had to make a low tide, so we were mounted by 10:20 am. Down the road to the beach, for a long segment of sandy stretches interspersed with sections of rocks and seaweed. We galloped and trotted the sandy sections, good strong canters without the sprinting we had on the racing beach. We left the beach a little early and missed the trail, but soon found our way again via the roads.

The weather was sunny and very lovely now, so we stopped to remove our jackets and eat a small snack. After more riding on the road, including crossing a major road, we came to a section of forest. At the entrance we met up with Heinrich from Horse Holiday Farm. He and a helper were cutting branches to try and firm up the mucky trail. We were soon to discover how much it needed it. We went up a short trail fairly mucky and came up to a cairn or circular stone wall with a beautiful view of the surrounding valley. We dismounted and took a short break then started onto the trail through the forest. And what an adventure! Deep mud and muck, up to the horse’s hocks and beyond (up to the belly in one case). At one spot, there was some plastic eggshell-type, flat mats, like |_|_|_|_ that had been put down to give a surface to walk on—only they were very slick and were obviously strange feeling under hoof. I got Kileen on them but he then froze and refused to move any direction. He was frightened—I could feel him shaking. At that point, both Glen and I got off. Glen led Sunny past us off the plastic and to the side where the footing was a bit better. Sunny leaped over the worst of the muck and partly stepped on Glen’s foot. I stayed more to the side to lead Kileen off the plastic. He stepped into the muck instead of leaping and sank over his hocks. The rest of the trail consisted of leading and riding, Glen leading Sunny in front for more of it than I since his boots could slop through better than my paddock boots. We also had a lot of branches in the face from the spring growth plus plenty of biting gnats. It was about a kilometer of this, with some parts being better than others. We were very happy to see the gate to the dirt road at the end.

After this, it was a long long ride along roads to the next B&B. It was mostly just a slog punctuated by passing cars. The only adventure was two dogs who came tearing out of a yard. We’d met many dogs, and many barked but they were not threatening. These came on much faster, barking and snarling in a much more vicious manner. They came right to Kileen who could immediately tell they were more threatening, as his body tensed and head went up. He knew what to do though—when one came at him from behind, he turned his head to look at the dog, then struck out sideways and back with a very swift cow kick that went just over the dog’s head. There was no yelp or thud so Kileen didn’t connect, but it must have frightened the dog since he went straight back to his house without another bark and his companion followed a little behind. Kileen apparently does not suffer annoying dogs.

The B&B was nice, run by an older couple. After seven hours of riding, plus an hour before and after getting them ready and putting them away, plus being dehydrated from running out of water, we were beat. We showered, devoured a lovely dinner, then went to bed very early. A good day, but so tiring.