Love it or hate it, we are in era of the “selfie”. Let’s face it, it’s also pretty hard to pass a camera from horse to horse and ask someone to take your picture! So, here is our journey…in selfies!

Day 1 Selfie – Tensions are running high, everyone is a little nervous aboard, it’s raining, and I have a bad mount.

Day 2 Selfie – New day, new horse, sunshine, first day jitters are over. Things are looking up!

Beach Ride Selfie (at a canter, if I may add).

Attempt to make the selfie less selfish. There are now three.

Attempt to include my favorite people in the selfie – Mom & Patti riding through the rice fields!

Attempt to get all five of us in the selfie! Nacho is missing, but we actually had no idea where he was.

He didn’t love me doing this, but I didn’t care.

Mom and I at the top of the mountain.

Me, Picasso, Mom, Ben, Patti, and Tesoro climbing down the mountain.

Patti actually took her first selfies on this trip! Here she is refining her skills.

Well done! Photo credit: Patti’s Selfie Service

There you have it! I feel like I should contact my helmet cover company and ask for a product placement endorsement!

Wow! I have never had such wonderful picnics in my entire life! In addition to “Nacho”, or guide, we were blessed with Danny, our support team. Danny moved our luggage from hotel to hotel, checked everyone’s girth before leaving, mixed up the horse feed for us to distribute, and most importantly…made our picnics!!

We would arrive somewhere after a few hours of riding and there would be a beautifully set table, complete with table cloth, ceramic dishes, and even flower arrangements! Each picnic included four courses (gazpacho, salad, main, and dessert), cava (local sparkling wine), AND red wine. This is living folks!

Despite rain, our first woodsy picnic!

Lunch for everyone!

Nacho and a cava toast.

One day we had lunch at a winery, which included tasting six (or seven?) different wines. I can’t remember! This was a lot of “firsts” for me: first time riding a horse to a winery, first time tying up said horse amongst the vineyards, first time having a wine tasting in my riding pants, paddock boots, and half chaps, first time trying to ride a few hours after a wine tasting. Needless to say…the post-winery ride was mostly walking!!

Look at all those paddock boots under the table!

Our last day we had our picnic on the beach. We celebrated our journey with TWO bottles of cava!

Nacho & Danny

True to Spanish style, each lunch stop also included a siesta! I only took advantage of the siesta time once, but this provided plenty of time to catch everyone else mid-zzzzzz’s!

Sarah & Vanessa

Patti

Nacho

One of the bays in a red halter is napping.

Picasso’s siesta – complete with saggy lower lip.

Sarah & Vanessa

Mom used a saddle pad to solve the “I’m napping on a stone wall” problem!

Why can’t regular life be filled with picnics and siestas?!

8 days total, 6 days with horses, 110 miles, 20 hours in-saddle.

Here is a general idea of what we covered. General being the optimal word. “It’s all relative!”

During our point-to-point ride, we saw every type of terrain (and other things) you could think of! Villages, the countryside, beaches, mountains, orchards, vineyards, fields, the wilderness! Wild poppies, running cattle, dogs on roofs, dead pigs, tortoises, cuckoo birds!

At the beginning of the ride the terrain was more urban…walking through narrow alleyways, past old cathedrals, and we even waited at red lights!

It rained for most of our first day of riding, which was a bit of a damper, but led to an amazing rainbow before dinner!

Apparently 4+ hours wasn’t tiring enough for the horses, because they proceeded to act a fool in the pasture.

Those specs in the picture are flying dirt clumps!

The second day we galloped along the beach. You would think that six horses coming at you at a decent clip would encourage you to move out of the way. It was surprising how many people didn’t even move an inch!

We were told not to look down because it would make us dizzy. Whoops!

We rode through vineyards and hay fields, orchards of olive trees, and other fruits I didn’t recognize, rice fields and cork forests.

The last day was definitely the most picturesque as we rode high into the mountains along terraced mountain trails.

Patti with the snow-capped Pyrenees in the back ground.

Mom & Patti

However, what goes up must come down! There were several times where we had to dismount and walk the horses down the paths on-foot.

I can’t say that Picasso’s skills as a “follower” were all that great. If I stopped for too long to take a picture, he just head-butted me right in the back. I don’t even know what would have happened if I needed to tie my shoe!

We eventually made it all the way back to sea level and our beach picnic.

Outside of the first day, the weather really held out for us. Perfect temps + sunshine = quite a week!