Pony trekking in Iceland

This is a photo I have saved for a rainy day. Well that day has arrived.
 
 It has been used once before on Blipfoto and I hope you will forgive me using it again especially as it features that well -known Blipper, Ceridwen,   (second from right. I am on the right).
 
Half a century ago, yes some of us were alive then, I spent a year working in Iceland and while there Ceridwen came out on a university field trip with other students from London university. We both came from the same part of Wales and knew of each other. My mother, a great networker, put Ceridwen in touch with me when she heard she was coming out to Iceland.
 
What stirred this memory today is an article in The New Yorker  magazine about the new Indoor Generation.
It is possible that in the not too distant future such trips as pony trekking in distant parts of the world will no longer exist. 
We will all have been shoved back indoors, a process accelerated by the current pandemic, because apparently we already spend 90 per cent of our time there.
 
 
Only this morning a cousin of ours in Yorkshire rang up to say that his family had taken him out for lunch for the first time since since lockdown because he is shielding. He is already spending 99 per cent of his time indoors.
 
But don’t we all need can crave contact with the great outdoors? Isn’t it good for our mental health? Yes but there is a new trend developing.
 
A friend of mine in London, not noted for her love of animals, has taken to watching live streaming every day of wildlife in Africa.
I asked her why since she had never shown any interest in the subject before.
“ Because it puts me in touch with the natural world.”
 
Architects and designers are already working at making our buildings more user friendly so that we never need go outside again.
 
As for the Indoor Generation, argues the New Yorker, only the poor will go out. The rich will live cocooned lives indoors.