Only fools on horses

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Bright and breezy, I flew out of bed this morning at 6.30am, somewhat fortunate that there were no others in my dorm last night so able to make as much noise as I liked. Today I'm off horse riding, something that I've not done in 20 years so I'm excited, terrified and thinking it can't be any worse than a bungee jump...

The drive to the stables takes about an hour, through the early morning mist of the Blue Mountains, which is eerie yet serene. The sat nav conks out half way but as it's a straight road, I'll be OK (and I'll also make sure I get my money back from the car rental place for giving me the dodgy kit in the first place!). As I get to the stables, it's a field, with a couple of barns and a landrover. There are horses of various sizes, shapes and colours (you can see I'm an expert on such matters, clearly) all ready to go, and a man and a woman dressed like cowboys. However this was no fancy dress exercise, this was for real...

It was to be me and a Taiwanese guy that were going out on the 2 hour ride this morning. I'm allocated Clyde, a huge gentle giant of a horse, and the Taiwanese guy had Trinity, apparently the only horse that the cowboy (who turned out to be a rather dashing Icelandic working holidaymaker called Atlee) had ever come off. The Taiwanese guy looked like he'd crapped himself - this was only his second ever ride and so had needed to be shown all the ropes, down to how to hold the reins and basic steering, when he arrived. The idea that he'd got a maverick horse looked like it had sent him over the edge. I passed my test with flying colours - 'it's clear you've ridden before' - so very little attention was paid to me after that, which suited me fine (in case my poor trotting/cantering style was picked up on).

We set off downhill and uphill across the pastoral land of the farm. They keep 55 horses here so it's a big old site. As we navigated through the fields, kangaroos skipped on by, cattle retreated looking terrified at the amateur riders heading their way, and eagles soared above our heads. Despite the fact we weren't riding in the national parks - banned by the authorities - it was a spectacular ride. The Taiwanese guy couldn't trot for love nor money, and no doubt would have suffered fairly significant bruising to his nether regions as a result of his inability to rise and fall with the trot. My horse seemed to be permanently hungry and in need of stopping to graze every five minutes. He was strong as an ox, and very nearly threw me off in order to reach down to munch on the long grass that appeared every now and then.

We reached the summit, with Atlee taking photos of us in our gorgeous surroundings. We cantered off, then walked down the hill, back towards the farm land which lay about 40 minutes from where we were.

My horse decided, despite Atlee's reassurance that they're trained to follow each other, that it was time to veer off course. On the downhill trek, despite me directing the horse right, he veered headstrong left. Into a tree. A tree with very low branches that he could clear, but that I, perched a few feet above him, certainly could not. Cue my panic. As the branches headed towards my waist, let alone the bulk of the tree towards my face, I did the only thing I could do and that was lay flat back on the saddle. Too late to jump off, and certainly too high seeing as this horse was enormous and this rider all of 5ft 2... So I'm stretched out on my back, with the branches catching my jumper and lifting it over my head. I grabbed a branch with my left hand, determined to swing myself off this bloody thing before I ended up impaled. I don't have any upper body strength however I felt like I was slowing the horse down at least.

And then he took off, like a scalded cat, tearing through the remainder of the tree and taking me flying with it. As we emerged the other side of the tree, as I'd had to let go of the branch for fear of leaving my arm behind, he threw me clean in the air and onto the ground below. My trainer flew sideways off my foot, my gaiters were left somewhere in the field behind. I rolled and tumbled to the ground...

And then I laughed. Why? Because there was a point in time where I genuinely believed I was going to be torn limb from limb, that it was impossible to drag me through the tree and that I was going to end up in all sorts of a pickle. I was so relieved that I was sitting on the ground, untrampled by said monstrous horse, and conscious.

That was until I saw Atlee's face. Whiter than snow, all he could do was stare. The drip drip drip in front of my eyes of crimson blood then told me all was not well - I put my hands to my face and it was like I'd dipped them in red Dulux. I'm now properly fearing the worse, as well as feeling worse, as Atlee regained his tongue to tell me I looked like I'd been in a bar brawl, that he can't believe Clyde was capable of such a thing and that the only way back down the hill was to get back on the horse....

Suffice to say, there was no worse thought in my mind of having to clamber back aboard a horse that clearly didn't want to play ball. I decided to walk down the hill while Atlee frantically called back to base to say that all was not well up the hill. The Taiwanese guy, who said very little before this point, was now rendered totally mute, looked like he'd crapped himself twice over and was whiter than Atlee. No one answered the phone for ages, before the owner picked up and dashed up in her 4x4, complete with minature puppy sat on her lap.

Hospital, was all she could say. Oh and that Clyde will take himself home, he's a good boy, he gives rides to disabled kids, he's the kindest of them all, it must've been a brown snake that scared him...blah blah blah... DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE HORSE??? MY FACE IS FALLING TO PIECES! I caught a glimpse of myself in the wing mirror but still couldn't cry despite the horrific bloodied scene. If I cried, that nose bleed that I worked so hard to stop would start again no doubt... On the way back to the main road, another two amateur riders are on their way out for a hack. One caught sight of my bloodied face and declared she wasn't comfortable on her horse. When told that my horse was coming back and he was much gentler, she looked like she might faint. We drove off before finding out if she did the best thing for all concerned and abandoned her ride and walked back to base...

At the hospital, I'm taken straight through, x-rayed, stitched, glued and steri-stripped and told it's a 2cm gash that's been stitched above one eye, a 4cm graze above the other, cuts and grazes to my nose, whiplash but nothing broken. Oh and has my nose always been wonky? Horrified, I just said 'no!', only to be told that it must have been because it wasn't broken in the fall, just the cartilidge that's been bashed around. My nose is swollen but it looks better than it did before the crash (bar the cuts of course) - the bump in the middle of it has now been absorbed into the swelling and it looks half normal. Let's hope it stays that way!

The woman from the riding place said to call her once I was mended. The lady on reception did that, and was told that it'd take her an hour or so to get back from Katoomba to the hospital in Lithgow. I'd now been in the hospital the best part of 4 hours and was desperate to get back to the hostel, to pack up and get back to the safety of Sydney. The receptionist suggested that I go grab a coffee, and I nearly burst into tears again, as I had nothing but a camera and a riding hat on me - not a penny to my name. I asked if they did tap water and she said yes, so off I hobbled to get the drink that I'd been denied since my arrival, in case they needed to operate on any of my shaken bones.

As I got to the coffee place, there was a cappuccino waiting for me. Another lady walked in and paid for it 'on behalf of Sandra on reception'. I was overcome - it may have been $3.50 but it was the sheer kindness of her arranging and paying for that coffee that touched me. As I limped back round to reception, both the receptionist and I were nearly in tears as I thanked her for being so incredibly kind to me, the hapless tourist who'd had the run in with the tree. I noted that I needed to write to her boss to say what an amazing member of staff they have in Sandra Ryan.

As the riding school woman came back, I popped a stitch by sneezing so was taken back through for another check up, while she went off to the police station to collect her handbag (she'd apparently driven off with it on the car earlier in the week, which said a lot about her and her organisation skills!). She came back, took me back to the ranch and said not a word more - no refund, no 'I'm sorry', nothing. I got into my car and drove away, conscious of the enormous black bruise that I was to find later on my backside and the shooting pains up my back, as well as, so it appears, a million splinters in the palm of my left hand from gripping the tree. There was no sign of Atlee - I think he'd probably had to take an early bath with some vodka to take the edge off his day from hell.

Back at the hostel, and I'm told that I'm not the only one to return from riding today looking like I've fallen from the ugly tree and been smacked by every branch on the way down. This, accompanied by the fact that I wasn't the only one in the hospital with riding injuries that day reassured me once more that it wasn't just me and my bad luck. The doctor at the hospital implied that the horse knew what it was doing, let's say, and told me of the other casualties. I racked my brain to remember if I'd seen the petrified other girl somewhere in the hospital - if she too had been lumbered with Clyde, unhappy with what he was being asked to do...

Given all the delays at the hospital, I decided to stay in the hostel until tomorrow, and arranged with Jess to go back to Bondi in the morning. Plenty of painkillers coming my way to get me there, but I'll be glad when I'm back. Has it put me off horseriding ever again? Not at all - it was a lovely ride until the horse went psycho. Do I stand a chance of making it into the Olympic riding team? Er...Still, it'll be a fun story to tell everyone, probably with the response from them 'it could only happen to you Adele', and it remains to be seen what the parentals make of it when we have the weekly Skype session tomorrow. May need to invest in a spot of stage warpaint to mask the damage first!

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