DAY EIGHTEEN
Before coming on honeymoon, we wrote up a detailed itinerary with plans for all the places we were going to visit but there was one last minute addition that we just had to do — horseriding on the beach!
This was Iain’s first time horseriding so they gave him one of the older horses in the stable, a mare who had ridden this route hundreds of times and was quite happy plodding along and posing for the camera at any opportunity.
Cai, on the other hand, let the group leader know about her years of horseriding experience so she had the pleasure of riding one of the more unruly horses in the stable — adding a little extra spice to her trot along the beach.
As a horseriding ranch aimed at tourists and families, it didn’t quite allow the level of equestrian freedom that Cai had been used to growing up, but Iain was secretly quite pleased that the tempo was more gentle canter than unruly gallop.
Here is Cai chatting to the horses in the stable afterwards.
We then headed off for lunch in Mendocino, a relatively affluent coastal town (nicknamed Spendocino) that had a nicely relaxed artistic feel. Wandering around, we were pleased to see how proudly ‘local’ all the shops were — workers’ collectives with natural organic produce, and stalls selling beads and incense.
We especially enjoyed the Mendocino chocolate company and made sure to sample as many of the different flavours as we could — telling ourselves that this is allowed as you are only on honeymoon once.
One of the claims to fame of Mendocino is that it was the shooting location for a number of episodes of Murder She Wrote, and we could see why the producers would choose this spot to recreate a fictional town over in Maine, New England. It is a very picturesque location that evokes a particular type of old fashioned Americana — white picket fences and all.
In fact, it could all be in danger of feeling a little twee and artificial, but this is balanced with the proudly artistic vibe of the place that means that Mendocino is as ‘Californian hippie’ as it is ‘Angela Lansbury’ — hell, even the footwear here is ‘progressive’ — making it a very memorable place to stop on our honeymoon adventure.
