Walls in France: Horse play!

For the second week of spring break and at the request of Lucie and Kathleen, I signed the girls up for a horseback riding “stage” at the Centre Equestre d’Eygalieres. Their program starts at 2 in the afternoon and goes until 5 or 6pm. Kathleen and Lucie rode at the same barn when we were here with my mother during the summer of 2007 so they were immediately comfortable with the surroundings and even some of the horses. Their afternoon consists of grooming, working in the ring, jumping and trail riding. Yesterday, Kathleen worked on voltige, which is when the rider does acrobatic moves on the back of the horse. Both Kathleen and Lucie had done voltige during the summer of 2007 and enjoyed it and since Kathleen is a dancer, the instructor wanted her to give it another try!

The girls and I have noticed things that are different about riding here in France versus riding at Stardust Farms in South Carolina. Besides the fact that the people and horses speak a different language, we noticed immediately that the horses are smaller here than in the US. The instruction program is also different because the rider has to be tested on each level of accomplishment in order to move on to the next skill. The tack for the horses is new to us…lots of ‘masks’ here for bugs, different halters, and the horses have to wear “protection” on their shins when jumping. Riders jump differently here too…in the US, we learned to do a 2-point when approaching the jump, but here there is none of that which sort of confounded Kathleen when it was her turn to jump. The instructor told her how it was done here, and she went for it. I was impressed, but yearned for the old days with Miss Jamie (as I am sure Kathleen did as she went over those jumps!). Lucie also told me that to get the horse to canter with the right lead, there is some complicated formula that the French do. She is trying to learn it, but we all agree that what we learned at Stardust (pull the rein in a bit) works just fine!

The girls are definitely learning a lot and enjoying their time at the barn. It does, however, make us all nostalgic for Stardust and all of our four-legged friends there!