Wellington Rd Parkes to ‘Inwood’ Newell Highway
Lunch camp, Meg ready for the next leg.
It was pitch dark with a just gone full moon rising tonight as we cut our destination of ‘Minaroo’ short and pulled into ‘Inwood’ 32 kms on the West Wyalong side of Forbes. Esther rode just over 80kms today with many interupptions throughout, but all good. Had a couple of media interviews and many people stopping to talk which is brilliant. Met up with the sister of a friend from Kempsey (Leo Smiths sister Marie) -on the edge of Forbes, which was delightful. It is so good to see anyone with a connection to Kempsey. Also today right on lunch camp had Keith and Barb French from French’s Rodeo Photo’s drive past in their bus on their way to a horse event at Gunnedah do a sharp ‘u’ turn and come back and join us for lunch. Keith and Barb very generously donated a massive and beautiful photo of Hannah and Lena at Chiltern rodeo in 2008 for us (plus Barb came to our second dinner dance in 2009 and spent up big on many auction items!) It is so good to connect with people.
Lofty had a tough morning this morning, with a minor ‘tying up’ (cramping in his gut) for a couple of hours, so we had to keep him walking and we got behind a few hours then. Esther did an awesome job riding the Newell Highway there is literally thousands of B Doubles and semi’s on this road. Joe and I heard many truckies talking about the ‘girl riding her horse’ today. The truckies are mostly fantastic. It isn’t as cold for us as we’ve had though I suspect we’re in for a frost tomorrow morning. We’ll be up at 5am, cuppa tea, feed the horses, and Esther hopefully will be riding away at about 6.30am. We’ll stop and have morning tea with Richard and Sue Maslin (our hosts for tonight!) We’ve got a farrier lined up for West Wyalong this Saturday, Lofty has already worn the shoes out he got on at Quirindi!. Rest day in West Wyalong on Saturday (shopping, cleaning truck, washing all our clothes! updating computer stuff, downloading photo’s etc.)
A massive thankyou to the men at Forbes Auto Electrical Service for sorting out our twelve volt charging system!
