The Longest Format: Salisbury Beach

So the round barn is a 15-minute haul from the beach.

...I'll just let that sink in for a sec.

I hauled up a few years ago with friends from the old barn for the MSPCA's Horses Helping Horses fundraiser ride down this beach and had a blast. (The photo at the top of this blog was taken that day.) The beach is off-limits to horses except by special permit during the warmer months, but we're allowed the ride it in the off-season and we've been meaning to do so for a while now, but the tide charts and the weather and everybody's schedules never quite meshed...until yesterday, when (as what turned out to be my last act before succumbing to another go-round of the plague, le sigh) we rendezvoused in the morning and hit the road.

Our timing was off, alas. We arrived on the wrong side of the low tide and the sweet spot -- that stretch of sand just above the waterline that's just wet enough, but not too wet, for good footing at speed -- was unavailable. But the sand higher on the beach felt like a deep-but-acceptable arena (maybe frozen at base level? I dunno), so all was not lost. Our three horses were obedient but fizzy, and we had a nice bright trot in company and then a nice hand-gallop.

I split off from the group after one pass up and down the shortened beach. At low tide, you can go past the Blue Ocean Music Hall (where I've seen Blues Traveler a couple of times), but not when we were there on Sunday. One of my barnmates wanted to work on getting her horse into the water and both wanted to get in another gallop, so I headed back up the beach at a nice working trot and then a stretch of baby interval and obedience work: 8 trotting strides on one diagonal, 8 on the other, 20 of canter, repeat the 8-and-8 of trot, and then canter 20 on the other lead. (No reason for the numbers other than that they're what make sense to me. I always swap my posting on trail in sets of 8 or 16 and if I'm counting canter strides, I do that in groups of 20; apparently those are the numbers that my brain can hold while counting indefinitely.)

I'd been a little meh about Tuck's movement on the last gallop in company. We'd been homeward bound, he was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to manage his legs in the sand, and the group's pace kept sneaking up a little bit faster. He wasn't naughty or anything; I just didn't love his trajectory. But he felt super in those trots and canters, really listened and used himself well.

We hooked back up with the others halfway back down the beach and strolled back to the trailer making plans. Looks like low tide is at lunchtime this coming Sunday and now that the days are longer, there's no reason we can't do a quick load-and-go after work on a weekday, even, and there may have been some negotiations towards an oh-dark-thirty load some weekend morning when the low tide lines up with the sunrise...many more beach pictures may be in this blog's future, is what I'm saying.