Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Last week, before I got the flu and bronchitis that's had me in bed all 
week, I sat with the people who have started the Egyptian Endurance 
Riding Association.  They started this group about the second year of 
the UAE/FEI endurance inundation here to provide an alternative format 
for rides.  They haven't done much really and they asked me to come 
into the group to handle the webpage, educational articles and 
scheduling....ie about everything to do with contact and organisation.  
I told them that I would come in gradually with the website and 
planning and such over the next year until I've made my move to my new 
place and hopefully have some more time for this.

One of the things that had time to nag at me this week is an issue that 
I suspect has enormous impact on our horses.  When we ride in the 
desert here, we have NO trails....that's right, nothing but plain sand 
and rocks and more sand.  You are hard pressed to ride in exactly the 
same places as last time even if you want to because there are so few 
markers to go by. When they have rides/races, the course is marked by 
poles jammed into the sand with flags on them, but the "track" is 
non-existent.  There are a few places in our desert where there are 
dirt tracks that could be followed for a while, but nothing that goes 
anywhere you want to go.  Digesting a few years of ride stories and 
looking over photo pages, I realise that even the desert rides in the 
US use dirt tracks or tracks of some sort for the trail, right?  This 
is what I need to know, because riders here tend to ride in the style 
of the more "experienced" visitors, who I believe are not usually 
riding in the same terrain.

So I have really a sort of stupid question here:  Does ANYONE ride 
without any trail whatsoever?  If so, where and when?   I believe that 
there are a lot of tendons relying on this answer and I may have some 
serious changes to encourage in riding patterns.  The footing in a 
sandy track is not at all the footing in virgin desert, if you will 
excuse the expression.

Maryanne
Cairo, Egypt


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