"Lean, lean, lean!!" says Fowler-Prime with increasing urgency as we near the corner. Too late: with my weight on the back foot, I try to edge the board but career straight into the fence and fall in the sand. "Let go of the rope," I hear too late.
"Ok, let's try again." So we do. Quite a few times. With my fingers curled around the not particularly fat rope, my short nails dig into my palms. I have to hold the rope so that in the event of an accident it will slip through my fingers. The problem is that however hard I grip it slips through my fingers at all times, taking skin with it. Each jolt, each jerky burst of acceleration, bye, bye skin.
Fowler-Prime goes to find some riding gloves. With my grip now firm, we jolt off. "Lean, lean, lean!" he says -- I'm leaning so hard my right buttock has cramp -- and success! I'm round the corner! I've barely time to feel pleased before I career into a wall.
I continue to try and do two corners consecutively while they tell stories. "Remember that time when you got whiplash?" asks Hilton-Jones, fondly. "When the board got stuck in a rut and you head-butted the ground."
"I don't remember that one," Fowler-Prime says, looking lost. Hilton-Jones busies herself with the rope. I look ahead. We press on.
And then, hands clamped, forearms pumped, I finally get around two corners at once. There's some general whooping and with pink cheeks and cold feet we go in for lunch.
Over fried-egg sandwiches, we discuss Fowler-Prime's brainchild. It came about when he was in Cornwall with a friend, feeling bored. The friend tied a mountainboard to the back of a car. Then they tied it to a motor bike. "And he had horses as well, so I said, `Let's try it.'"
The weeklong courses will involve two days of "horse mountain-boarding," two days getting used to wakeboarding on the lakes of Thorpe Park in Surrey and one day of putting it all together horse-surfing on a beach.
By the end of the afternoon I've mastered the corners and we've cantered our way right round the paddock. I let go, forearms exhausted. As a sport, horse-surfing sounds daft, but while I haven't been to the beach yet I can see it has all the ingredients to make it addictive: balance, speed and the edge of being slightly out of control. Add in close proximity to such powerful, spirited animals and I'm not surprised that by the time I leave I feel truly happy, and eager for the next part of my training -- on the water.
So when was Fowler-Prime last in a straitjacket, I ask as we leave. "Actually I've never worn one," he says, pleadingly. And then, walking off: "But some people think that I should."
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