Why I am glad to have broken my vow never to ride a horse again.(Another Voice)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 28-AUG-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

'Put your left foot here, into this stirrup'--I glanced down at a decorated steel half-shoe hanging on a leather strap--'and grip this stubby thing with your left hand....'--I looked up at a sort of leather knob about the size of an orange set into the prow of the saddle--'and now lift your weight on to your left foot in the stirrup, swinging your right leg over the back of the horse.' A bit of an effort, this, but it was how I was taught to get on to a boy's bicycle and I found I still could. 'Put your right foot into the stirrup on the other side, and settle into the saddle.'

I write this from Colombia where I am travelling this month and about which I shall hope to write for the Times. Picture me in the yard of a little farmstead, gaily painted, with high ceilings and old-fashioned verandas: the Finca San Jose, in a nature reserve on the lower slopes of the valley of the Corcora fiver which rushes down from the snows of a range of volcanoes between Bogota and the Pacific, themselves an immense...

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