Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Riding Gear

While I was over in Chile (In the farm country near Temuco) I specifically went looking for some old Spanish riding spurs from the colonial erra.
Id seen them when I was there many years ago, and I have not seen them anywhere else in my travels.
My mum used to love horses and rode as much as she could. She also made sure all us kids had the opportunity to learn to ride, and we all did, though I stopped the soonest.
Anyway, I decided to buy me some of these outrageous spurs and an old Spanish snaffel bit as reminders I guess. They are so large with so many sharp points that you would probably think they are cruel to the horse... But its not so, the points on the "rouls" are so close together that they really cant dig in and hurt the horse at all... They are just very "showy"... How "Spanish" :)




I dont think Ill wear them riding the bike down here, but they do make for quite the image, and they have that great "ching, ching, ching"... as you walk along :))