by Chris Dolley
I thought it strange that I never actually saw anyone riding a horse in the three weeks I’d spent house hunting but everyone had been so adamant – horse riding? No problem, lots of it.
I began to suspect that perhaps, none of these people actually rode.
The biggest problem where we were was the lack of tracks. Or, more accurately, the lack of usable tracks. There were plenty of chemins, they just didn’t go very far. Twenty yards in from the road and they fizzled out – usually into thick forest or a fence.
If Rhiannon had been better in traffic this might not have been a problem. But she had an aversion to large lorries, noise, tractors, cyclists, oddly shaped trees, flapping polythene...
She had a very long list.
Shelagh was ready to give up ... until we noticed a stable a few miles away and plucking up courage – and the ubiquitous dictionary – decided to investigate. Maybe someone there would know of a good place to ride.
And so we met Chantal. Very sun-tanned, very blonde and very talkative. Like many of the younger French we met, her English was much better than she let on. And much better than our French. She’d only just moved to the area herself and was in the process of establishing a livery.
She’d had trouble finding places to ride as well. Although she had found a excellent sandy square in the village to use for exercise. Or so she’d thought. It was just like a purpose-built menage.
That is until she noticed the word Boulodrome writ large on a sign by the entrance. She was just thinking ‘Thank God, no one saw me’ when she became aware of the large number of eyes peering at her from various surrounding windows and gardens.
It’s always the same. Do a good deed and the streets are deserted, plough up a Boulodrome for half an hour and the entire boules committee are having a tea party next door.
She spent the rest of the afternoon with a rake. The French are very particular about their Boulodromes.
But she’d love to have Shelagh ride with her. She’d enjoy the company. Exercising horses was not much fun on your own. Would tomorrow be okay? She had a friend coming down from Toulouse in the afternoon. A young girl, who, though an inexperienced rider, was keen to learn and had a horse at the stables. Why didn’t Shelagh join them?
Shelagh could think of two very good reasons – Rhiannon and her long list of things she didn’t like to meet while out riding. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up. She’d meet them at two.
oOo
It was a long ride to Chantal’s. Made even longer by the appearance of seventeen assorted tractors, lorries and flapping fertiliser bags. The latter waving so menacingly from their roadside nests that Rhiannon was forced to tiptoe past on the far side of the road. Nothing could be more frightening than a fertiliser bag where a fertiliser bag shouldn’t be.
I’ve often wondered how Rhiannon would have fared in the Wild West. And where cowboys found horses that could be left loosely tied outside saloons? Every horse I’ve ever come into contact with would have disappeared before the first foaming pint came sliding down the saloon bar. And as for riding through gunfire – none of our horses would have made it past the first oddly shaped haystack let alone ridden into danger.
But eventually Shelagh and Rhiannon arrived and trotted into Chantal’s yard. Whereupon both were immediately besieged by a welcoming pack of assorted dogs.
Rhiannon did not like dogs – they were on page five of her list – especially those that ran between her legs. She liked to maintain a dignified distance between herself and other animals. A personal space that extended to the ground even where she didn’t.
A few sly sideways kicks quickly punched the air but the dogs didn’t even notice. They were too excited at Shelagh’s arrival. They knew a horse in the yard meant a walk was imminent. And a walk meant adventure.
The fact that the ride was to be accompanied by three large excitable dogs was not the only surprise. Veronique, Chantal’s young friend, had a gelding.
Rhiannon did not like geldings either. They were on pages one, two, four and six of her list.
And it was more than a dislike, it bordered on the pathological. Put her next to a stallion and she became a paragon of good behaviour – quiet, obedient, calm, a fluttering eyelash or two. But put her next to a gelding and she’d lunge at him with teeth snapping. Or spin round and try to flatten him with her back legs.
Shelagh tried to explain the situation to Chantal as best she could but not surprisingly the intelligence was not immediately believed. That is until Chantal noticed Rhiannon, teeth bared and ears back, pulling strongly in the direction of Veronique’s mount.
If ever a horse looked bent upon a course of dire deeds, this was that horse.
After a brief peace conference it was decided that perhaps the best plan was to keep as much distance between the two horses as possible. And not to tell Veronique, who was nervous enough without the added pressure of a psychotic quadruped with a gelding fixation.
So Shelagh was tasked to ride in front, Veronique at the back and Chantal would keep the peace in the middle – and give directions. There was a forêt domaniale a mile or two down the road. She hadn’t explored it fully yet but from what she’d seen there were some good riding tracks there.
Off they set, down the short drive and onto the road.
And along came Chantal’s dogs, tracing energetic circles around the horses and occasionally through their legs.
Naturally, this did not meet with Rhiannon’s approval who, in between kicking out at the dogs as they ran between her legs and craning her neck around to keep an eye on the gelding, was becoming somewhat difficult to handle.
Half a mile down the road, the three dogs became four – the fourth recruited from a passing garden.
Persuading cars to slow down for horses on the road had been a recurrent headache for Shelagh all her riding life. But not today. The sight of three horses being circled by a pack of bouncing dogs proved too much for even the most insistent motorist. They stopped. One driver wound his window down. Whether for a chat or to remonstrate about his journey being interrupted was never known. For as soon as his head moved towards the open window he found a large, hairy dog had got there first, its muddy paws resting on the lip of the glass and tongue slobbering over the driver’s face.
But dogs are easily bored and ten minutes later there were none to be seen. They’d disappeared through a gap in a fence and shot off in search of something new – probably a rumour that a giant rabbit had landed in a spaceship two miles away. Dogs are very gullible.
Which left Rhiannon free to concentrate on the gelding, a demonic eye scanning behind at every opportunity.
The road bent and curved its way between thickening woodland, predominantly oak with stands of chestnut and acacia; slender spires of juniper dotted the roadside, the whole knitted together with thorn and briar and huge hanging vines. Dark, abandoned and impenetrable. Except to the deer and wild boar and the occasional hardy chasseur and his dog.
It’s still strange to see so much wild woodland. Even the National Forests in Britain are largely managed, their paths maintained, the undergrowth cut back, the trees thinned. It’s a business. But in rural South-West France so much is just left, an abundance of land and a declining rural population having turned vast tracts of woodland back to nature. With no one to maintain the tracks, the old chemins quickly disappeared under advancing woodland. As have the old stone buildings, giving an eerie feel to the place – silent, dark woods, abandoned ruins.
Which turned the conversation, quite naturally, towards eerie topics. Witchcraft for one. According to Chantal it was endemic in the Pyrenees. And worse in the Ariege.
Veronique listened in mounting awe as Chantal detailed the pagan proclivity of the French départements. Haute-Pyrenees – witches, Les Landes – witches, Gers – witches. According to Chantal, any département with a tree in it was susceptible. It was the curse of the campagne.
Chantal had a very vivid imagination.
> A grassy track loomed up on the left. A firebreak between the old abandoned woodland and a newer stand of conifers. If anything, the tract of conifers was even more forbidding. A densely planted sea of straight poles gradually merging into a vast blackness twenty or thirty yards in. But the firebreak was inviting, a line of light between two dark places.
The three riders followed the firebreak on its angular path around the plantation and off into a network of smaller rougher tracks. Thick woods stretched deep and dark on all sides and an eerie quiet descended. Gone was the distant hum of tractors and civilisation. And even the sky disappeared under the spreading canopy.
Rhiannon stopped dead, ears pricked and wild-eyed. Her usual reaction when confronted with anything remotely out of the ordinary – like a leaf out of place or a strangely shaped twig.
“What is zer matter?” asked Chantal, moving up alongside.
“She thinks she can see a monster in the bushes,” joked Shelagh.
It was only a casual remark. But unfortunately Chantal knew enough English to know what a monster was and enough imagination to give it flesh.
“Monstre!” she cried.
“Qu’est-ce se passe?” asked a nervous Veronique from further back.
“Monstre!” repeated Chantal, now wide-eyed and convinced of an imminent attack from at least one bogeyman.
Veronique did not need telling twice. It may not have been the Ariege but it wasn’t the centre of Paris either. There were trees everywhere. How many did a bogeyman need?
She spurred her gelding on, who responded by shooting off in the only direction it knew – straight ahead – nervously pushing itself between Shelagh and Chantal and barging both horses aside.
Which gave Rhiannon the chance she’d been waiting for – a clear expanse of passing gelding flesh. She lunged, teeth bared, missed the gelding, grabbed Veronique and nipped her leg. Veronique screamed and galloped off through the trees convinced that at least half her leg was now residing in the jaws of the aforementioned bogeyman.
Chantal wasn’t far behind. She hadn’t seen Rhiannon’s lunge, she’d been too busy keeping control of her own horse when the gelding burst past. But she’d heard the scream. And that was more than enough.
Needless to say Rhiannon pushed all thoughts of strangely shaped twigs into the rear stable of her mind and set off in hot pursuit of the gelding.
It was a very dense wood.
With very narrow, twisty ill-maintained tracks.
And three desperate horses.
Two terrified riders.
One deeply embarrassed rider.
And four dogs who, drawn by the screams and furious galloping, had decided to forgo the rabbits from Mars and rejoin the party.
Shelagh’s screams of “Pas monstre!” didn’t help, either. Terrified ears quickly discarded the pas part and homed in on monstre. And if ever there’s a greater spur for leaving a dark wood in a hurry than being pursued by repeated screams of “Monstre! Monstre!” I have yet to hear it.
There are undoubtedly passages in the French Highway Code covering the etiquette of riders coming out of a forest track onto a main road. Probably something to do with stopping. But when you’re an inexperienced rider on a runaway horse and you’re being chased by a bogeyman – or bogeymen – and urged on by repeated shouts of “Monstre! Monstre!” you do not overdwell on the finer points of road etiquette.
Not that Veronique noticed the arrival of the road. With her eyes tight shut and arms locked in a bear hug around the gelding’s neck, she was more concerned with not falling off. And when you’ve discarded the reins in favour of the limpet style of riding you do not have that many options when it comes to stopping.
Or much idea of where you’re going.
Which is why she didn’t notice the car.
Now, as in England, motorists in France tend to fall almost equally into three categories. Those who slow down and treat both horse and rider with caution. Those who regard horses as large cyclists (i.e. nuisances who don’t pay road tax, have no rights and deserve to be run off the road at the first opportunity). And people who are late, who, if not in actual possession of a note from God suspending all traffic legislation in their vicinity, are confident it’s only a matter of time before they do.
As the first sounds of the car horn penetrated Chantal’s consciousness, she thought she’d identified a fourth category – the bogeyman. Who, not being a very fast bogeyman, had presumably taken to his bogeymobile in an attempt to catch up with the horses and was now laying in wait where the track met the road.
Of course, she was wrong. It was a fifth kind, the enraged dog-owner, who – convinced his pet had been kidnapped by a gang of mounted animal vivisectionists – had been combing the roads for the last fifteen minutes in an attempt to track them down.
“C’est mon chien!” he cried as, on cue, a hairy mop burst out of the undergrowth pursued by three even hairier ones.
“Give him back!” he continued, or words to that effect. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to accurately interpret an angry Frenchmen in full flow. Individual words cease to have meaning, instead they coalesce into a flow of emotion, waved on by energetic hand signals.
He was not amused.
Neither was Chantal.
When you’ve just fought for your life to escape the clutches of a bogeyman, the last thing you need is a mouthful of abuse from a motorist. And, being French, she was well equipped to give as good as she got.
Shelagh slipped past the conflagration, out onto the road ... and walked straight into another. Forty yards down the road stood a grazing gelding. It had had more than enough galloping for the day and was now in the process of replenishing its reserves from a roadside bank. A process made all the more difficult by the strange growth on its neck – Veronique – who, arms and legs locked, hung upside down with a tenacity that few limpets could even dream about.
Rhiannon pulled towards her quarry. Shelagh tried to make her stop. Veronique continued to defy gravity.
And in the foreground, Chantal and the motorist continued their wide-ranging debate on dogs, horses, bogeymen and animal experimentation. That is, until the enraged motorist, seeing his beloved pet’s face at the passenger window, made the mistake of opening the door for his dog ... and was immediately engulfed by four excited canines.
A run in the woods and a ride in a car – could life get any better?
Few things in life are more difficult than persuading three large dogs, all adamant that a car ride had been promised, to vacate the back seat of a car.
Trying to deter a psychotic horse from biting its prey could be a candidate.
As could manoeuvring said prey whilst hanging upside down from its neck with your eyes closed.
It was a difficult day.
Chantal’s dispute with the motorist switched tack.
“Give me back my dogs!”
“I don’t want your dogs! Get them out my car!”
In the background, two horses danced excited circles as Rhiannon made repeated lunges towards the gelding. Rhiannon pulling for all she was worth to try and get her teeth into the gelding while Shelagh did her best to turn her away and Veronique wished she’d stayed in Toulouse.
The only happy faces beamed from the back seat of the car. What a day it had been! Could they come out again tomorrow?
Three Fêtes and a Football Match
Our first experience of a French fête came in early June. We’d found the unexpected invitation waiting for us in our post box a week earlier. Journée Pêche, it had said.
It took us a while to work out whether this was a peach festival or something to do with fish. Fish was ahead narrowly, as we’d never seen much evidence of peach worship in the village. But we were far from certain – who could tell what old ways dwelt amongst the rural hearths of Gascony?
We read on. It was to be held at Tuco, by the church, a five-minute walk from our house. And the invitation came complete with a menu and a programme of
events, starting with early morning fishing – or, possibly, peach picking.
The midday meal seemed remarkable value at only fifty francs. Especially as it included an apéritif, charcuterie, salad, paella, fromage, dessert, coffee and wine. Plus what looked like a barbecue of whatever the pêcheurs caught that morning. Could you catch peaches? And would you want to barbecue them if you did?
Peaches were definitely out. Although the image of wild peach hunters crouching by the roadsides with their long peach spears glistening in the early morning sun lingered for quite a while.
The programme continued into the afternoon with what it called an amicable game of boules. The fact that they had to print the word ’amicable’ implied to me that perhaps the normal game was far from it. Should we take our coloured plastic set or would that be taken as an insult to the national game?
We were still wondering about the etiquette of using coloured plastic on the hallowed gravel when we noticed the last entry in the day’s festivities. Grillades, Soirée Dansante et Feu de la St-Jean.
Ah. Feu de la St-Jean, didn’t that sound suspiciously like the burning of Joan of Arc? And how would the presence of an English couple at the burning of a French saint go down with the locals?
And why were they burning her? Wasn’t she on their side? Wasn’t that akin to burning effigies of James I on Guy Fawkes night?
Or was this something peculiarly Gascon? I’d noticed the name Prince Noir appear frequently in glowing terms in the local tourist guides. The Black Prince built this, the Black Prince killed that. He’d been Duke of Aquitaine and the feudal lord over much of South-West France. And apparently popular with the locals because he knew how to fight and gave a good party.
But was that enough to turn the region against Joan of Arc?
Which is where my history deserted me. Was Aquitaine still in English hands when Joan of Arc was around? Or didn’t that matter, was this like the English Wars of the Roses where rivalry became timeless? Certainly, I could imagine a Yorkshire village fete committee looking favourably upon a suggestion that effigies of Lancashire be burnt as part of the coming year’s celebrations. But was there the same depth of feeling here?