Riding with the Gauchos Jim White Hadn’T Been on a Horse Since He Was Twelve but Was Persuaded by His Wife to Take to Four Hooves in the Argentine Hills
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Riding with the gauchos Jim White hadn’t been on a horse since he was twelve but was persuaded by his wife to take to four hooves in the Argentine hills Gaucho guide Daniel looks out across the ridge towards Cordoba in the valley below e’ve reached the point,’ life were a movie directed by Quentin are not encouraged at the dinner table, said our host Kevin Tarantino, this would have been the you would be urgently hoping none of Begg, ‘where many of moment when the soundtrack changed to your relatives could meet the ransom our guests think: “Oh some long-lost surf music as an ironic demands. After a couple of days relishing ‘WGod, I’ve been kidnapped”.’ warning that drama lay ahead. the trail rides, the barbecues, the wine, You could understand why. Kevin had Except the truth was, we were heading the hospitality and the sense of delicious just steered us in his four-wheel drive to Kevin’s ancestral farm in the hills far dislocation from modern life, you will vehicle off the tarmac, past a chained above Cordoba, Argentina’s second city. wish you could stay forever. gate and onto an unmade track, And frankly if you were kidnapped and Kevin’s family have farmed in this part seemingly heading off into the middle of taken to Los Potreros, then the moment of the world for more than a century, nowhere. There had been no trace of Kevin’s wife, Louisa, met you at the gate since his great grandfather arrived in humanity since we had passed a police with a welcoming glass of ice-cold Argentina from Scotland. Back then, road block about five miles previously. homemade lemonade, the moment you there was a fortune to be made from Phone signal had disappeared. The only were shown to a sumptuously breeding cattle and sending their hides sign of life came from three condors comfortable bedroom warmed by a back to Europe. The invention of circling nonchalantly above the parched flickering log fire, the moment you read refrigeration only increased the financial hillside, apparently licking their beaks in in the notes to visitors open on the opportunity as it opened up an inter- anticipation of imminent carrion. If my antique sideboard that mobile phones continental market for Argentine The Oldie November 2016 79 meat. For a while it seemed like an eternal seam of gold had been struck on the rolling hillside. However, this being Argentina, where institutional incompetence, government corruption and fiscal cack-handedness is a way of life, after four decades of declining yields, these days the country that once supplied the world with steak is now a net importer of beef. And to keep Los Potreros functioning as a cattle ranch, Kevin has been obliged to open it up to visitors. For the past fifteen years, Britons, Americans, Germans and Brazilians have flocked here, drawn by the promise that they might – for a few days at least – live like gauchos. For me, there was but one small drawback to Kevin’s offer to go out rounding up his herds. Unlike the legendary Argentine cowboys, with their The main house at Los Potreros, built in about 1830 innate horsemanship, my entire history of horse riding was restricted to a pony than 100 carefully nurtured steeds are parakeets, all of it head-turningly exotic. trek in Wales aged twelve. The second we remarkably welcoming to a beginner. Then, as the sun begins to set, you return set off that day my mount, instinctively Quick, nimble, responsive, these are exhausted to dinner, a heaving banquet noting the incompetence of its rider, horses much in demand in British polo of chargrilled steak, accompanied by the sauntered to a hedgerow where it circles. And visitors ride the same estancia’s own Malbec. munched away, unmoved by increasingly animals that are used to round up cattle A couple of days of that, and Kevin desperate attempts to make it shift. I took and chase after the ball in a chukka. reckons you’re ready to help the gauchos the hint. For the next 46 years my only Though the word ride implies you are work. So out we went with Daniel and experience of horses was watching the somehow in control. The truth is you sit Enrico. It wasn’t hard to tell us apart as we one I’d backed finish a distant last at there, sinking into the sheepskin-covered set off. We were in travel-insurance- Cheltenham. Not once since had I saddle while the horse does all the work. friendly riding helmets, the gauchos in climbed aboard. Your apprenticeship begins with a day casual Basque berets. We sat erect and But my wife had booked us into Kevin’s of trail riding. Accompanied by a cowboy rigid in the saddle, they slouched with an place under some misplaced belief that and an enthusiastic British guide (ours easy relaxation. riding with gauchos across the Argentine was a delightful woman called Kelly, who Yet I soon convinced myself I was pampas was somehow romantic. Which at the age of 41 had decided to pack in her blending in. After we had galloped across immediately alarmed me. After all, round job in office administration and unleash the flatland behind a dozen or so our way back in the Seventies, growing her inner gaucho), you head off into the charging thoroughbreds, encouraging pampas grass in a suburban front garden depths of the farm. Covering 6,000 acres them towards a corral where they could was rumoured to be a sign that the of scratchy, scrabbly Argentine be counted and checked for signs of the householder was a swinger. scrubland, it makes the average Scottish ever-present danger of puma attack, for a None of that in Los Potreros, however. sporting estate seem cramped. And the moment I thought I had somehow found Not least because after returning from trails across it take you to astonishing the wherewithal to take on gaucho ways. five-and-a-half hours riding across the places, from mountain ridges affording I was quickly disabused. Our next task hills you are in such muscular difficulty views over Cordoba thirty miles away, to was to round up some of the Aberdeen you are walking like John Wayne. astringently cold waterfalls (where the Angus cattle that lead the Life of Riley in Yes, five-and-a-half hours a day in the gaucho wisely remains fully clothed as the hills. My job was to ride in a wide arc saddle does sound unlikely for a total his foolhardy guests dive straight in). behind them and encourage them novice. But at Los Potreros they are not Occasionally the gaucho will ask you if through a gate. But they took no notice of remotely fazed by beginners. Kevin may you fancy ‘uno medio galope’. And off me and scurried off in the opposite speak with the clipped accent of the your horse canters, picking up speed as it direction. I gave chase, kicking my horse English public school alumnus, but there goes, allowing you for a moment to into action, certain I was approaching is no old-world exclusiveness about the imagine you are Clint Eastwood in maximum possible speed in the pursuit. riding here. This is a place that exudes a pursuit of a black-hearted bounty-dodger. Then I felt a whoosh of air as Daniel New World evangelism. Kevin likes As you go, you pass all sorts of wildlife, swept past me, moving across the ground nothing more than introducing the from Pampean grey foxes to ring-tailed like a South American Ryan Moore, hapless beginner to the gaucho’s craft. chasing after the cows to block their exit There is no age limit to the sense of route and send them back the way he discovery either: the week before we were ‘As the sun sets, you wanted them to go. When his horse there, a woman in her eighties was out swished past by me for a second time, it cantering across the grassland. return to dinner, a farted extravagantly in my direction. As a Mind, it helps that the horses are so heaving banquet of critical notice of my riding ability, it could accommodating. A mix of Criollos and not have been more pointed. Peruvian Paso, the Beggs’ herd of more chargrilled steak’ www.estancialospotreros.com The Oldie November 2016 81 The stable door opens Newmarket has long been the HQ of British horseracing. With the revamping of its museum and opening up of its Jockey Club Rooms, life’s also-rans can now get a look-in, too, found Nigel Richardson eneath a morning sky as blue as premises just off the High Street: Charles Newmarket from every other racing town Godolphin’s racing silks, II’s former racing stable and what is left in Britain. More than fifty towns have clusters of horses and riders of his palace next door. racecourses – Newmarket has two – but took the Newmarket Gallops up But the real story of Newmarket is out none has a heath where thoroughbreds BWarren Hill at a swinging canter. here on these lush acres of training can open their legs and show their class Standing by the fence on Moulton Road grounds. Nigel Wright pointed to the (to quote the late Ron Pickering in a we caught them on the down stretch. crest of the hill. ‘This is where it all different context). ‘Morning!’ said my companion, Nigel started,’ he said. ‘You’ll see the painting Newmarket sits in a region of fenland Wright, to one of the riders, adding sotto in the Jockey Club Rooms.’ The painting on a band of well-drained chalk that rolls voce, ‘That’s James Fanshawe, the in question shows Charles II, who put out in smooth, gradual hills and open trainer.’ Newmarket on the map as a racing town, valleys.