The View Between the Ears in the Irish Countryside

You’d think we had a thing for chestnuts round here. But we just seem to keep acquiring them. And in fact, my father is actually obsessed with dark brown horses and not ordinarily a fan of chestnuts, yet here we all are. AND DON’T THEY SHINE LIKE BURNISHED GOLD IN THE SETTING SUN. (Not in this pic, but it’s coming.)

A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Jun 11, 2015 at 3:36pm PDT

I started @betweentwoears on Instagram in summer 2014 as a place to keep and share all the photos I was taking while out hacking.

There’s a painting I’ve always loved called The Finest View in Europe by an English painter called Snaffles; it’s of the view from the saddle across the fields to where the hunt are, with the neck and ears of the painter’s horse in the foreground. Every time I took one of these ‘ears shots’ I thought of that. I felt I had this deep knowledge of this 5 mile square, very historic corner of Wicklow and wanted to share it, and Instagram is the perfect place to do that.

When you’re out riding you have a really unusual perspective and when you’ve been hacking around the same area for years, particular places begin to have their own peculiar significance — like the place where there are good blackberries, or the place where there are dogs are that will always bark, or where a certain donkey lives that the horses always want to talk to.

I just have one horse, Ben, a Thoroughbred. He’s 11 now and we’ve spent the last six years having fun working up the grades in eventing here in Ireland. Ben is a really fun horse; he’s fast and he’s brave and we share a love of cross-country — the galloping, the jumping, the adrenaline.

That translates into how he behaves out hacking — really alert, which makes for great photos, as he’ll stick his head up and prick his ears at almost anything. There’s a fine line between when he’s happy to stand and stare and when he decides to take fright, but luckily I know him well enough to sense it and to shove my phone in my pocket and gather up my reins quickly.

It never even occurred to me that Instagram might find the account and take an interest in it. But they got in touch in December 2015 and posted one of my photos on their Instagram profile and their blog. The photo got 1 million likes, and my account gained thousands of new followers.

This is one of my all-time favourites, it’s so reminiscent of that rare thing, high-summer in Ireland. I love how the foxgloves are blowing in the same direction as Ben’s head is turned. And the view from that particular spot is amazing — all the way down the coast to Wicklow Head. It reminds me a bit of the painting I mentioned that inspired me — Snaffle’s Finest View in Europe. Definitely one of me and Ben’s favourite views.

  A huge thank you to Kristine from @lifebetweentheears for such a magical 4th of July Instagram takeover with lots of inspiration for the dream riding trip across the USA. This was my view on the 4th of July. (That black dot is not a helicopter, it’s a fly doing a pretty good impression of one.)   A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Jul 7, 2015 at 2:35am PDT

This is hilarious. It’s so Ben. He loves apples but it really bad at eating them — he has to take dainty little bites, where most horses would just munch it down in one go.

GIMMIE ALL THE APPLES.

A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Sep 5, 2015 at 1:08pm PDT

I do a lot more riding on days that look like this than days that are sunny and bright, but it’s much harder to capture that, so there are fewer of them on my page. I love this one because it was what we call in Ireland a ‘soft day,’ the type of day where you go out thinking it’s not really raining that much, but when you’re out you find that it is, it’s just that it’s really gentle, yet persistent, and you’re sodden by the end.

  I’ve just arrived home to Ireland after a week in the glorious sun (sadly no opportunities for overseas Between Two Ears-ing) and the rain is so torrential there’s a weather warning in place. So to salute the rain, and its permanent place at the heart of an Irish summer, I’m reposting this shot of a ‘soft day’ as we say here, from a year or so ago, way back at the beginning of Between Two Ears.   A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Aug 22, 2015 at 6:07pm PDT

I took this one before I started Between Two Ears, but it was the one that got me thinking about doing a profile dedicated to Ben. It was at the very start of Tattersalls International Horse Trials in May 2014. Not many other people were there yet and we were exercising out in the warm-up field when this huge storm started to roll in. Naturally, we trotted back to the stables quickly, but not before getting this shot.

#TBT to this time last year, the day before competition started at @tattshorsetrials. Ben and I went for a walk in the exercise area and narrowly avoided a soaking from this dramatic raincloud. This is the first year in four years I haven’t been able to compete at Tattersalls International, such are the compromises of juggling a career and eventing. Good luck to everyone competing at one of the best and most fun internationals in Europe. Next year, I’ll be back .

A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on May 28, 2015 at 12:25am PDT

This tree fell at my parent’s house last winter. It was about 200 years old, and 70-foot tall, and apparently some relation of the Giant Redwood (which we don’t have in Ireland.) It was so vast, and it was awe-inspring to see it on the ground like this. It also narrowly missed my father when it fell!

Tangled wreckage. A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Jan 31, 2015 at 1:48pm PST

Riding on the beach is the best. My sister and I took two of her youngsters for their first trip to the beach over the winter. They were very good and happily went into the sea, but every so often, they would leap sideways as waves came towards them. There were some other people on the beach on horses who were very quiet and we realised we were those crazy people on leaping horses, laughing hysterically.

We took @leamoresporthorses’ two babies Ivor and Garfield to the beach this morning for their first time. There was lots of leaping over waves and splashing. (And yes, Ivor and Ben do look strangely similar.)

A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Oct 31, 2015 at 3:25am PDT

This is the local church. It’s tiny and ancient, at 800 years old and counting. It’s rumoured that there’s a tunnel that leads from it to the ruined castle that sits opposite, but no one has ever found it.

Continuing the ecclesiastical theme, this is our local church. It’s 800-odd years old. Graves in the churchyard date back to the 1600s and there must be many more underneath. There’s also believed to be a tunnel from the church to the nearby ruined castle, but it has never been found. A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Jul 12, 2015 at 4:16am PDT

Every winter I go to a music festival in the picturesque Co. Kerry town of Dingle, and we always try to go pony trekking when there, although the weather is usually abominable, as you can see in this photo of a sodden, windblown Connemara pony on the side of a mountain.

An out-take from pony trekking in Co. Kerry last winter: freezing, sodden, and practically being blown off the pony with the wind, but galloping this little Connemara along a mountaintop was still brilliant fun. Topped off with warming up by a turf fire and drinking a hot port or two

A photo posted by Between Two Ears (@betweentwoears) on Dec 16, 2015 at 10:38am PST

Be sure to follow @betweentwoears on Instagram and share your own Between the Ears photos in the comments below. Go Eventing.