The Long Riders' Guild

Thierry Posty, who has already made Long Rides in Europe, Canada and Alaska, Australia, Mongolia, South America, the United States and Cuba and South Africa, has recently set off to ride the length of New Zealand.  His journey began just before Christmas in Auckland.

French-speakers can learn more about the French Long Rider at World Trail Rides.  We will update this page as and when we receive news from Thierry.

August 2007

Having finished his rides in New Zealand and Caledonia, Thierry is now in Japan.  Click on the picture below to read an article about him in Japanese!

Thierry completed his ride in New Zealand and is now in New Caledonia.  Here is his latest message:

"I have already been travelling for more than two weeks with my new companion, whom I have named 'Nakei Geo" (eater of bananas in Wawulo).  We were happy to exchange the main road on the west coast for the luxuriant fairyland of the east coast and its Kanak villages.  The vegetation is stunning.  We regaled ourselves on bananas, of course, but also coconuts, avocados and other tropical fruits.

The Caledonian bushmen are often like caricature cowboys who live with the rhythm of the sun.  They almost made my stomach burst with their stews and deer sausages cooked over a wood fire.  They also prepared for me their famous "Bougna", a traditional Melanesian dish.  This is cooked on an oven which consists of hot stones placed at the bottom of a hole in the sand or earth.  Among the Koe tribe, near Touho, I had curried prawns.

The further north we get, the more miraculous large fish we find.  The Melanesian welcome us with much respect.  They say they are proud and honoured that I chose a Kanak horse for my journey across the island.

The Melanesian, or Kanak, culture is an ancestral one with an essentially oral tradition.  All beliefs and legends are transmitted by the "old" who thus perpetuate the traditions and customs.  The key figure in family life is the maternal uncle, known as "Uncle Uterine."  The subjects respect the small chief and the big chief, and listen to the opinion of the old ones."

November 2007

Although Thierry has not updated The Guild on exactly where he is at present, and what is happening, he did send us photographs of his rides in Japan:

and Fiji:

April 2008

December 2008

Thierry Posty has written from Columbia!

He and his grey horse, Chico, have ridden from Ecuador to Columbia. 

They crossed some of the wildest parts of Ecuador, riding up to the eternal snows of Cotopaxi, the highest active volcano in the world at 5,897 metres (19,346 feet) and going in search of the last wild horses of the region.

At first they were difficult to approach, but our patience eventually paid off thanks to the serenity put out by Chico around his relations from another age.  After two moving hours spent with them, the stallion decided that the meeting had gone on long enough, rounded up his mares and foals and they all galloped away. 

Thierry underwent a totally amazing experience on the equator itself.  Thierry was riding along on Chico on a road leading to a hacienda when the horse started staggering like a drunkard.  For several metres, Thierry could not control the horse, who was ready to collapse.  He leapt off, horrified, thinking back to all the things he could have eaten such as a toxic plant.  Thierry had to walk slowly, away from the road, under the shade of a tree.  Thierry vigorously rubbed the horse’s stomach, and the animal rapidly improved.  “I immediately decided to stop at a providential hacienda,” Thierry wrote, “where the owner immediately explained this strange phenomenon on his road.  In fact, this road followed precisely the “Centre of the World” which is none other than another way of describing the line of the equator.  Depending on where one is, the behaviour of certain physical forces around us is quite different, the effect of the Coriolis effect, another one of Mother Nature’s mysteries.”

“The following day,” Thierry continues, “we had no alternative but to use this road at magnetic latitude 0.  In the centre of the road, he staggered again, but when I made him walk along the right and left sides of the road, his behaviour was quite normal.”

The pair went on to the Napo-Sucumbios region, which is in the middle of the Amazonian forest.  Because the forest is so shaded, the 40 yard high canopy preventing the sun’s rays from penetrating, there was very little undergrowth.  Everything rots very quickly, leaving clean paths. 

Thierry was really surprised by the number of creepy-crawlies poisoning their lives.  “Never lean against anything, sit down, or put your hand on anything without checking first,” he advises.

A few days later, as Thierry and Chico were walking slowly along, a blood-soaked piece of flesh fell hard just next to them at the foot of a tree.  Looking more closely, Thierry saw it was a mutilated body of a snake.  Thinking that a bird of prey had dropped it from the sky, not finding it to its taste, he lost interest.  “But imagine our surprise,” Thierry wrote, “almost immediately to see flying above our heads a whole family of … snakes!  Yes, that’s what I said, flying – or more accurately, planning – snakes!  This kind of tree snake has a particular technique of moving around.   It hangs by its tail from a branch, positions its body in the shape of a “J”, with its head hanging down.  It then throws itself by rearing up suddenly.  In this way he “planes “ through the air, and can either land or hook himself onto another tree.  The corpse which fell at our feet was a snake which had crashed into the top of the tree.”

Thierry and Chico finished their adventure by crossing the border into Columbia, without noticing, and arrived in a village.  The Indians seemed in a great panic to see him, and it turned out that they feared that Thierry would be taken hostage. 

Thierry bad farewell to his faithful Chico, whom he had left in good hands, and is returning to Quito from whence he will fly to another destination which will be “the cherry on my South American cake – the Galapagos Islands – on horseback!”

The best of luck, Thierry.

Below are some photographs which Thierry sent us.  Click on any one to enlarge it.

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