What did you do as a kid that you'd never do now?

F

Flicker

Well-Known Member
Joined
18 January 2007
Messages
4,004
Visit site
Amazing how cautious you get with old age. When I had my first horse in South Africa, I would think nothing of riding in a swimming costume with just a towel and surcingle for a bit of comfort. Our YO had a huge garden and swimming pool and we'd swim all day, then get the horses out of the paddock and hurtle round her garden, or take them into the jumping arena and have races!!
No bridle, just a headcollar.
I did wear a hat though, because my dad told me he'd sell my horse the same day if he found out I'd ridden it without a hat.
God, now I get nervous riding outdoors if it's a bit windy!
 
Ride bareback down to the field with just a headcollar - I would do it now on some horses, but not on Ben (even though I used to!).

Get on any horse with the attitude "I'll ride anything once" (now I am more picky what I get on!)

Ride through the centre of Horsham of an evening/at weekends - lorries, buses, traffic lights etc not a problem. Even used to gallop through Horsham park, although not sure I was meant to.... I avoid even riding on country roads now!

Ride out for four or five hours at a time - I'd love to, I just don't have the time to spare/waste

Find at least one bridleway/field where I could have a gallop on every hack I went on. Now I rarely even canter!

I'm sure there are loads of other things!
 
Yes, at 13 years of age, I would think nothing of hacking my ex-racer alone all afternoon. Nobody at the yard knew where we were going but it was just assumed that we would be ok.
What a sense of freedom that gives you!
 
i used to jump a post and rails beside one of the bridleway gates every time on my 14.2. if i didn't think we'd done it well enough the first time, i'd jump back over and do it again. it was a full up 4' ish, maybe more.
i NEVER jumped it once i got a green 16.2...! i used to look down on it in amazement and struggle with the gate...
other than that, not much else i guess, although i haven't ridden bareback for a year or two, and used to do it all the time.
i don't vault on over the tail any more either, i'd need a springboard now!
 
I used to get up on my pony in the stable and just throw my arms around his neck. I'd stay there hugging him for ages and would sometimes get sleepy it was so relaxing, while he munched away oblivious.
Wouldn't do it now, mostly cos I'm too much of a granny to get on without a stirrups and a mounting block! :-)
 
loads- riding bareback, just headcollar,
riding no hat!! eek
Jumping stupidly big fences
Galloping everywhere
gymkhana games
riding for 5-6 hrs out hacking for miles and miles
Spending 12 hrs a day at stables in summer holidays (wish i had time now!!)
slept in stables a couple of times too!!!
riding alongside canals (alot) too scared now!!!!
falling off alot!!!!!! - didnt mind bounced well then
getting on off the floor - CANT do that now if i wanted to!!!
 
I would ride out for hours and miles.....

I used to ride every day without fail, in the dark, rain and snow....with my string gloves and weighed down by my wet barbour.....no climate control boots and breathable jackets in them days.

Now if its a bit drizzly I decide not to ride out....not that I'm a wuss, its for the good of my leather tack, dontcha know
blush.gif
 
oh god errr *thinks*

When I was wee nipper I used to canter up to this rope swing (that was cut short) that used to dangle from this branch this tree on this track, feet out of stirrups ready, grap the rope, pony keep gonig, I'm swinging from the tree like a monkey, pony used to stop and stick his head down into grass
grin.gif


pony loved it, I loved, I thought I was india jones
grin.gif
 
i still do the same things oops

the only thing i wont do is ride in wellies! and i always have something on my legs - boots or chaps or i get nipped
frown.gif
 
we used to ride 2 up bareback and gallop along the beach and ride up and down steep hills that i would think twice about now with just me onboard. Also used to love to jump bareback,the bigger the better. I also used to sneak off along the back of the golf course and local rugby club and think it was funny being chased by the irate care taker.These days I am far more sedate
grin.gif
 
Sneak into any farmers fields while out hacking and have a good gallop round or find hedges and stone walls to jump without permission.
 
Ride off for hours - often all day - by myself.
Ride bareback with a headcollar wearing just shorts and a top, no boots, hat, gloves, hi-viz.
Race the cars along the grass verges.
Ride through the centre of Cambridge to go to the vets or to take my pony to the school fete to give pony rides.
Hack from near Cambridge to Royston to visit a boyfriend.
Make big jumps out of hoarded cardboard boxes which would then go soggy in the rain.
Take the pony onto the children's playground and jump the benches and also the big rocking horse thing - with friends sitting on the ends make it swing as high as possible. I also got friends to hold the ropes of the swings apart and jumped between them - ultra skinny!
Jump the pony into the river for a swim - only did it once, it was a shock to find how far down we actually went and just how deep the mud on the bottom was. Further investigation from a boat led us to believe it was actually bottomless. After that we used to take the ponies through a friend's garden and jump them in where we could see a shingle bottom. At least we learnt from the experience.
Gallop a 13hh pony at a 15 foot wide dewpond to see what happened. (He made a damned good attempt at jumping it).
Gallop a pony at the edge of a field of brussels sprouts to see what happened. (He tried to jump it, not realising that it was hundreds of yards wide, and had a fit when he landed with the sprout tops touching his stomach, I came off and was concussed but still got up and rode a couple of miles home, having to stop on the way to be sick several times).
Accept when offered a field full of Welsh Mountain ponies, unbroken and fresh from the animal reproduction unit. Would I like to break them? Oh yes please! I was 12 and the ponies were eventually sold as children's ponies so they can't have been that bad.
Accept when offered a pony that had been given on loan for the summer to a friend. He came to me because every time my friend had ridden him he'd been bucked off - until he broke his arm which was when I was offered the pony.
Ride anything and everything I was offered at shows. Usually where pony had been a little git in the previous SJ class and damaged either it's rider's pride or person.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Sneak into any farmers fields while out hacking and have a good gallop round or find hedges and stone walls to jump without permission.

[/ QUOTE ]

do golf courses count? it was round the edges when Croda International had the grounds as a golf course, the director used to jump in his Jag and chase me, I used to escape through the woods
grin.gif


me bad.
 
Ha! how many of you are forgetting the times when you could go out in blissful peace, WITHOUT A MOBILE PHONE!!. Because you know, if you had a fall and broke your leg and couldn't walk and your horse ran off and fell in a ditch you'd be totally stranded without a mobile phone now, despite all the extra people and cars about.

Whereas back then (and we're only talking 15 years ago!) i would go out for 4 or 5 hours at a time, not tell anyone where I was going and quite happily plop off the side regularly whilst trying to get my fat 13hh to jump thistles!!

Oh, and the other thing that I never seem to do (not through lack of trying!) is BOUNCE!!!!
 
Ride the carriage horses to the field sitting backwards or sitting on the horses bum, it was about about a half mile. Fell off a lot and could not get back on.

Playing hook a duck on the beach, gallop past the oyster catchers, leap off, nab a bird and get back on again then release the bird. All done at the gallop and we were very good at it, we had loads of practice.
grin.gif
Would lose the pony now and again and have to get a lift back, no thought given at all to traumatising the birds, sorry oyster catchers!
 
*drifts back into childhood*......
My childhood was spent at a riding school in Essex. This is what we used to get upto.......
Me and a friend would get on her horse(bareback) and gallop up the field, racing other friends-poor horse. Cant remember how 2 of us got up there, but I'm sure I used to vault!!
Jump any horse well over 3ft - oh, the thought of it makes me feel sick!!
When we went to catch the horses, we would always ride them back to the yard bareback with just headcollars.
Spend long hot sunny days "helping out" in return for free rides. Gosh, I wish I could do that now!!
Throw various friends in the water trough on a regular basis (only in summer though)......
Oh happy days!!
 
I didn't have my own pony, but we used to get up to allsorts with the riding school ponies, some of which the YO knew about!!! Dread to think what health and safety would say now.......

Riding Bareback (or sometimes on a NZ rug), including jumping, galloping and riding on main roads.

Riding bareback down the lane and trying to stand up......

Riding up and down the steep embankment to the old railway line

Standing up on the saddle to reach stuff out of trees during scavenger hunts.

Jump anything we could find while hacking

Trail off the back of organised hacks so we could canter to catch up.

Ride one lead two bareback down the lane

Jump stiles

Make our own jumps on our hacking routes so we could divert over them while out and about

Eat dinner sitting at the top of a stack of round haybales

Climb up the haybales in the barn, out of the window and jump down onto the muck heap for a soft landing

Think the muck heap was a warm place for dinner and not at all unhygenic

poo pick with bare hands because Mum told me off for getting horse poo on my gloves and thought we should use shovels.

ride a horse that bucked, every lesson without fail.

always get back on after a fall, no matter how daft that might be (once tried to get back on with a broken arm and dislocated shoulder) even if it meant falling off several times in one lesson.

Oh those were the days...............................
 
Galloping a polo pony straight at the wall of the indoor school, spinning her at the last minute and gallop her back. And she wasn't mine!
blush.gif
 
oh lordy i used to get up to loaaaaaaads when i was at a smalll yard with my two bestfriends with our ponies. we'd all hack out down the gallops till 8ish, or go in the jumping feild till 8 in the summer evenings, and stay down the yard throwing eachother in the rivers, seeing how far we cld walk in the river untill our flip flops floated away! ahhaa. Galloping around farmer's feilds, entering privot estates and going on there xc courses! getting chased off of barns with the horses with our lunch in one hand - we always beat the farmer and snuck off..

Getting up the stables for sunrise and going back to our friends house on the bikes after dark, and being really sneeky, taking gin out of the kitchen and making a fire right at the bottom of the garden, on the otherside of the river with the marshmellows before going in to the garage and watching scary films and doing fashion shows, then walking down to the stables at 12.00am to see the horses!

Ohh the good days!...
 
sleep in deck chair in stable in the summer
Ride bareback in halter
ride in river
ride on my own from age 13
go on riding hols with pony
do lots of local shows (not many around now)
chuck her in cattle wagon and get driven to our summer caravan for the hols, chucking her in with farm animals for 6 weeks
Oh I could go on..... Now its all by H ans S rules
 
Riding bareback with just headcollar & leadrope for control, jumping without saftey harness on hat. Jumping anything jumpable out hacking on own in the middle of nowhere, I could go on !!!!!!
laugh.gif
 
[ QUOTE ]
oh god errr *thinks*

When I was wee nipper I used to canter up to this rope swing (that was cut short) that used to dangle from this branch this tree on this track, feet out of stirrups ready, grap the rope, pony keep gonig, I'm swinging from the tree like a monkey, pony used to stop and stick his head down into grass
grin.gif


pony loved it, I loved, I thought I was india jones
grin.gif


[/ QUOTE ]

Oh I just lOVE that one ^^^

I used to ride my unloadable pony into the trailer - but actually have done this more recently too - but then the trailer was unhitched, as were most of the others at pc rallies back in the 70s.
 
Glad to see others having similar fun!

- racing cars whilst galloping down grass verge along A road
- going for a fast hack bareback whilst my saddle was being re-flocked
- cantering through a stream and all my pony's boots floating away!
- day long picnic rides, tieing ponies to a tree
- spending every single day of every holidays at stables...hose fights, dunking each other in the water trough, building hideouts amongst the straw bales... just having fun!
- fancy dress competitions! Cringe!!!
- thinking a successful hack was one which involved galloping totally out of control (the opposite now applies!)
- feeling invincible! Jumping any fence or taking up any bet.
- go on wicked riding holidays with my friends and end up getting in to load of trouble
- always swapping ponies with friends and secretly preferring my friend's Arab x nutter to my own pony
- called my friend a chicken for not jumping a certain practice fence at a show, so she jumped it in the end, fell off, broke ankle, ambulance called, the whole show ground heard her screams. Oops.

Ahhh those were the days. When did I become so boring
laugh.gif
 
Ride bareback with just a headcollar, leading 2 ponies on each side ...
Gallop up grass verges trying to jump all the drainage ditches.
Vault on. And then slide off over the back end!
Jump wire fences (without a problem - if I tried that today I know it would end in tears).
Jump everything that stood still while out hacking - I remember jumping over large concrete mushrooms on someone's lawn ...
Go swimming in the Tweed with the ponies.
Picnic rides where we used to just let the ponies graze along the riverbank while we ate our sandwiches. We assumed we'd always be able to catch them. It didn't always work out that way.
 
jump five bar gates, speed round bsja courses at break neck speed, ride with no hat, bridle etc, pay no attention to 'elf n safety, do what the heck i liked, go out all day with no-one knowing where i was, for miles and miles and eat lots of sweets out hacking! Oh, and overtake masters out with Readyfield Bloodhounds!
 
Hmmm....jump ditches with overhanging trees. Anyone with half a brain can probably work out what happened there!

Have muck heap fights as PC camp, yuk!!!
 
Jump park benches even if they were at the side of a main road.

Jump those picnic tables with benches attached each side - wherever we could find one.
 
All the usual riding bareback with just a head collar and leadrope (ok done that today as well but it was my old horse of 23 who is retired).
Gallop along the grass verges.
Riding out in shorts and vest top and trainers.
Jumping all the benches.
Oh and fall off and get straigh back on, now i sit and have a ciggie to make sure i am still alive before getting up and getting back on
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top