DAY 36 Sun 18 July

I got through all my morning chores and was sitting over at the house keeping Maryanne company while working on the diary and the blog, when Maryanne noticed that the boys had Bunduq all saddled up. Not long after that they came over to ask me if I wanted to go for a ride, and Maryanne suggested that I head out for a ride on Dory. I don't know if I have ever ridden her before – possibly once, but I couldn't guarantee it.
So I headed out on Dory – she spent a reasonable amount of time jig jogging, especially if Americano was ahead of her (Waleed was riding Americano, Essam on Bunduq, Mohamed on Diva and Little Mohamed on Farhan). In fact, I was rather amused with her by the end of the ride – I think she is the only horse I have ridden who looks forward to heading out and wants to run run run, but when you turn her for home, she doesn't want it to end, and she just plods along. I managed to get some video footage while out riding today – not sure how it will come out, but it shows a little bit of the local villages. The cute donkeys grazing, the salesmen on their donkey carts. Two of the little girls who I have seen in the village before were sitting out on the edge of the canal, and one of them was playing with a very well loved teddy bear. It had certainly seen better days. And a little further along, there was a toy rabbit tied up in a tree. One place for it I guess, but very random.
Then when we reached the point of the road where we cross over, there was a broken down tuk tuk. They had tied a tow rope to a motorbike, which was going to tow it along – wish I had seen how that went. Also there we bumped into Tatouch who was driving home, so waved and said hi to him.
Back at the farm once the horses had been unsaddled, I headed back over to the main house, and while we were sitting there, Mohamed came in and pointed out the hawk sitting on the fence in the garden. I got a picture of it out the window, and then went outside to see if I could get closer and get a better picture. There were actually two of them, one sitting up on the roof of the house and divebombing the other, and then the one on the fence – it was amazing to watch them playing so close to habitation. And I got a reasonably good photo too – wish I had taken the camera with the better zoom, but I thought it was over at the guest house (it wasn't – blonde moment on my part).
The afternoon was spent relaxing, as it was too hot to do much, and we had a brief visit from Morad in the later part of the afternoon. At 6pm Maryanne had clients turning up to go out for a ride through the countryside – it was cooler than the previous day fortunately, and there was a lovely strong breeze blowing through. The path over the field that had been underwater last time we tried it was rock solid once again, though the end where we had initially tried that day to pass was still full of deep hoofprints. At one stage, there was a young girl dancing on the roof of a building. Just when you think that you have seen everything there is to see over here, you see something like that – it is for that reason that I take a camera out with me every time I head out – I may not be able to catch things like that all the time, but I do get some of them! The problem is that every ride, you see so many things that you would like to tell people about, it is hard to remember them all. Nicole had a good ride, and when we got back, she was already looking forward to being able to go again, before she heads back to Italy on Saturday.
After the ride had finished, I took over the last of Janie's potato salad to share with Maryanne, and Janie herself turned up for a chat not long after we had finished it. Soon after Janie left, I headed back over to the guest house to collapse for the night.

Countryside ride 20:
Distance - 4.36km
Time - 0:50:17
Average speed - 5.2kmph
Max speed - 13.1kmph

Countryside ride 21:
Distance - 6.20km
Time - 1:24:03
Average speed - 4.4kmph
Max speed - 13.5kmph