UK Sports and Leisure

The Horse and I

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ 3 Comments

Horse2 003

“To ride on a horse is to fly without wings.” ~ Author unknown

One of my nieces from America is coming to visit later this year. She is at that age in a young girl’s life when her thoughts, dreams and hopes for the future all pivot on one thing: her love of horses. For the moment she contents herself with her stable full of toy horses great and small, but I know that when she takes one of those toy horses in her hand and gallops it across the kitchen counter she is imagining herself clinging breathlessly to the back of a mighty steed, riding like the wind.

How do I know this? Because I was once a horse-mad young girl myself. Continue reading →

We Went to the Wilds – Part II: A Different Approach  

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ Leave a comment

 “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” ~ Alfred Wainwright, British fellwalker and author of the seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells.

DSC02815

Rain.

The rain drumming on the roof of our tent that first night at Coniston never stopped. Sometimes it was a gentle patter as soft as a lullaby, but more often it was a ferocious torrent, as though we had unwittingly pitched our tent beneath a waterfall. Continue reading →

We Went to the Wilds

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ 2 Comments

DSC_0398

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

During my first winter here in the UK I had an interesting encounter with someone who had just returned after living in the United States for five years. She was having some difficulty readjusting to life in her native England, and a wistful expression clouded her features when she spoke of all the camping trips she and her husband had taken from their home base in Ohio, which had allowed them to experience up close many of the natural wonders in the US.

I felt a stirring of pride at hearing my homeland praised so highly, and in an effort to reciprocate and express my love for the UK I told her that my husband was planning to take me camping in the Lake District in August.

The woman’s wistful expression vanished in an instant to be replaced by one of disdain, and she shook her head in a sad, condoling manner. As gently as she could she leaned forward and confided,

“It isn’t the same.” Continue reading →

All Hail the “Conkering” Hero

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ 4 Comments

DSC03685

Keats is famous for calling autumn the season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness”, and that certainly is an apt description of autumn in the UK. The days grow shorter, the nights colder, and each morning it seems to take just a little bit longer for the rising sun to warm the countryside and burn off the morning fog that weaves its way like a ribbon along the base of the nearby hills. The trees are beginning to glow with their glorious gold and russet, and the old stone houses that are covered with ivy flame with scarlet. Continue reading →

The Happy Wanderers

~ Elizabeth Hurd ~ Leave a comment

Image

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. ~ John Muir

“I’ve come up to ask you to go for one of our old-time rambles…” L.M. Montgomery

We are walkers, my husband and I. There are few things we’d rather do on a free weekend than throw a picnic lunch in a rucksack and strike out on foot through forest and field. You might say that makes us both a cheap date. Be that as it may, the times we spend together walking in both companionable silence and deep conversation have been some of the happiest we’ve spent together. Continue reading →