Day 58, 2nd July

Dazzy was very cute once again in the morning: He must have had an itch on the inside of his back left leg, so what do you think a normal horse would do? Almost fall over while bending round to scratch it? Leave it? Find something to rub it on? Well, not Dazzy; Dazzy comfortable laid down while surrounded by three people, dealt with the itch with his teeth and then got up again – very sweet.

We set off at about half past eight, our record for an early start (!) as we planned to skip the next place where we had stopped off on the way up northwards and instead to one further on. Also, we had to call in at Longfield Equestrian Centre again to collect some post I had had sent there a few days before. They really did great postal service again and the girl from the office came straight out to the carpark waving my package when I arrive – very handy, thank you! We went on along the bridleway then, just missing out a part of it before Summit (a part of Littleborough) where the official path would take you up an extremely steep hill, along the top and down an extremely steep hill – all with several gates, of course – just to avoid about a mile of nice road with a path and green on one side. That was the most maddening thing about the Pennine Bridleway: the number of times you end up doing three sides of squares when there is a nice little road along the fourth side or two sides of triangles when you could get by with one. Though we were doing a lot better on the way back as we by then knew where we were going and could more easily plan around the official route.

I was quite surprised at just how quickly the day went by and we arrived at our hosts' house at about six o'clock, happy to be at our place of rest and with the ponies happy to get some good grass on a field they knew and loved. We had a nice quiet evening and went to bed early in order to be fit for another double day in the morning.