Page 126 - Mobile Magic

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The gate was chained up so no cars could drive in, but set into the fence there was a row of poles that were about the same height as Magic’s knees. ‘What a clever idea. You could walk over these,’ she said to her pony as she squeezed with her legs to urge her on. It wasn’t quite as easy as it looked.
Inside she found lots of white-painted fences enclosing about thirty day-yards and a huge, soft, sand arena. Saffron had ridden in an indoor arena at her lessons in the big city, but the arena at Green Mountain was only a flattish area of earth with old tyres around it. ‘This is pretty flash,’ she remarked to Magic as she tried out her pony's paces for the first time on such a good surface. The pony stretched out her legs in an extended trot as they came straight across the diagonal. ‘Wow! You really can move!’
Behind the clubhouse they found a cross-country course. There were jumps made of logs, steel-drums and snaking rows of tyres. Some had archways over the top and others had pretty flower-beds in front of them. Most were graded into five levels. There were ditches, drop-jumps and even a water-jump.
They tried a few of the smaller jumps, but Saffron knew that she really shouldn’t be doing it by herself, in case she had a fall. ‘I’d love to do the whole course, but ... hang on ... I bet you’ve done it already, I’m sure your last owner said he’d taken you to Pony Club ... it must have been here! I think we’d better be getting home now, Chuckie wants to leave early so they’ve got plenty of time to set up the equipment.’