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I've always wanted to visit Canada in autumn (fall) and Betty-Ann Smart's always wanted to horse-ride in cowboy style, so this September with another friend, Sue Maling, we jetted off to Horse Creek Ranch, in the Sandhills Provincial Wildlife Park, 10 miles from Fort Assiniboine, Alberta, for two weeks of playing at being cowgirls.

The horses awaiting at our cabin

Our host was Siebe Brouwer, a Dutch former dairy farmer, who looked after us and the other 9 guests very well and made us three middle-aged, married ladies feel like little girls again - freed of all responsibilities for aweek, playing outside with the horses or cattle every day, and doing silly things like gold-panning for minute specks of gold (or iron pyrites!) and learning to rope fence posts and then each other. 

The ranch is ten miles from anywhere up a dirt track. Very remote but very homely. Grizzly and Black Bears, Cougars and Grey Wolves lived in the adjacent forest so we were forbidden from walking unaccompanied off-site. 

The holiday was a mix of cattle work, games on horseback and long trail rides.  Often we'd spent 5-6 hours in the saddle and we found the cowboy saddles really are like armchairs, incredibly comfortable. Our routes would take us through pretty aspen, birch and conifer woodland, all the fall colours coming and changing in their intensity each day. On the ground, mint-green reindeer moss and thousands of low-growing cranberry, bearberry,blueberry bushes, old man's beard on some conifers, making it  seem like an enchanted forest, just lacking the unicorns and fairies). 

	Paddling in the river mindful of the bear tracks on the beach

Some rides took us along the glacial River Athabasca's edges where we  saw tree stumps gnawed by beavers and one day, saw two Bald Eagles close  by who took flight (6' wingspan) at our approach. We found bear and wolf tracks on the shore too. 

In the forest we saw a Bull Moose (HUGE, much bigger than our horses, very shy and melted away into the forest), Coyotes (Alsatian-sized dogs who moved like foxes, and who sneaked onto farm each day to steal things, like people's leather boots, and who were very curious and would sit on field edge, watching us round up cattle, or watch us playing in arena),white-tailed and mule deer, red-tailed hawk, ravens doing acrobatic somersaults in the sky overhead, grey jays, blue jays, chickadees, squirrels and chipmunks. On a car journey into Fort Assiniboine, we saw Mummy Black Bear with 3 large cubs in an oats field. Mummy scarpered into the forest and stood on her hind legs, calling her cubs, but they were busy stuffing their faces. 

I say "car" but everyone drove huge pick-up trucks, Siebe's was a 7.5 litre Ford monster which comfortably sat 4 people side-by-side. Fuel is half the cost as here, and the streets are wide, vastly wide, and all the houses aremade of wood, often just one storey high or chalet-bungalow type, with wooden verandahs too, just like on the films. 

Our cattle work involved us working as a team to herd cattle from one pasture to another. Then taking it in turns to ride singly into the herd and cut out one calf. It's all about eye contact and body language, where you place yourself and your horse, and how you square-up to the bovine. Some horses were really good and did all the work for their riders once they worked out which calf was being chased. Then we tried cutting out one cow. (Cows were tougher than calves as they're wilier and know the routine). Then we worked in pairs and cut out two cows. 

The cattle were a mixture of shorthorns and beautiful Texas longhorns.  The longhorn cows liked to round-up every other cow's calves and take them off for the day, providing a creche service, which the shorthorn mothers seemed very pleased to take full advantage of. 

	Moving cattle to new pastures

One night we went for a horse ride: we left at dusk, riding deep into the forest and rode back in pitch-black. The horses could see well but we were blind. Only the grey horses and the white bark of the silver birch showed up almost luminously and very eerily. Every little crack of a twig and we wondered "is that a creature creeping up behind us?"... 

After our safe return and a warming cup of hot chocolate, we stepped outside the ranch lounge to walk to our cabins and wow, we saw the NORTHERNLIGHTS! What a beautiful yet out-of-this-world sight. Great rays ofwhite-green, like search lights, filled  the northern sky from west to east horizon. The rays grew longer and  shrunk, constantly moving and changingshape from line to rectangle to  parallelogram and back to line, and slowly moving across the sky, others in their wake. The display lasted perhaps 20minutes and we were all entralled, speechless!

	Oiling the tack

The nights skies were spectacular on any clear night. No light pollution somillions of stars, and the Milky Way really standing out. Satellites wereeasy to pick out as they moved across the sky, and shooting stars werefrequent.

Our holiday ended with a visit to the area championship rodeo at Barrhead.Suddenly being in civilisation, surrounded by 100s of people and noise, traffic, indoors (an emptied ice rink) under fluorescent lights, felt very strange after two weeks in the middle of nowhere.

Whatever our preconceptions about rodeos and the broncos and bulls, we had nothing but admiration for the cowboys and the rodeo clowns. Their reactions were lightning quick and their skills amazing. None of us would have gone near a bronco-horse, let alone a bronco-bull. The bulls were intent on revenge and would turn on the riders as soon as they fell or stepped off once their 8 seconds were up. One rodeo clown was tossed into the air as he tried to deflect the bull's attention from a fallen rider. "Good" you might say, "serve them right for riding the poor bull in the first place" but whether you agree with rodeos or not, the bravery of the cowboys and clowns was flabbergasting.

The rodeo culture is a very ingrained part of life in rural Canada and US too.  The horses and bulls are bred specially for the job and many have a working life over several years.  The breeders are specialist rodeo suppliers who also supply the complete rodeo: staff, outriders, clowns, fencing, stalls, etc.

Afterwards we went to the rodeo party where all the men looked like extras out of the Village People pop group videos and irrespective of what musicwas played, the only dance was the couple's Two-Step (a bit like ourquickstep).

And so ended our one-off, very unusual riding holiday, one which we'll remember for a long time to come.Sue Rogers and Betty-Ann Smart