Day Twelve –started out pretty much how day eleven ended.  Cold and wet with a driving wind.  The horses were shivering again and I felt rotten putting the saddles on their cold hunched backs, but we had to get out of here somehow!  We were up and away by 08.30 –just glad to be on the move again, but close to hypothermic.

We couldn’t ride our horses for more than 20mins at a time before we’d be starting to get dangerously cold.  The only way to beat that, is to get off and walk until you warm up again.  At one point after walking fast for 10mins, this didn’t appear to be working and I was getting pretty concerned I’d gone past the point of return.  There was nowhere at all to shelter to put additional clothing on (I had most of it on anyway) and nowhere to stop and get a hot drink / food.  As I struggled on by foot, from behind me drifting through the howling wind, I hear a rousing rendition of “The Flower of Scotland”, this spurred me on to walk faster and get my sorry ass warmed up!

Chose your trail partner carefully… and try to look after them at all cost… they are worth their weight in gold :0)

Eventually we reached the shelter of some trees and had an easier ride the rest of the afternoon.  It was still very wet and cold though, so again we took advantage of a bunk house for the night to dry as much as we could out and to get some warmth back into the bones with a hot shower.  The horses too were found good shelter for the night and they appreciated the drier and warmer surroundings too.

Note the lack of photos from today due to very cold hands!