By Virginie Liatard-Roessli
On a beautiful autumn day, when the trees are just starting to take on warm colors, I went with Jess, our photographer to Le Manège de La Sallivaz in the canton of Vaud. My son started riding there about a year and half ago. Unfortunately, at this time, my state of health did not allow me to consider returning to the saddle. Hence my excitement a few months back once I was able to resume this activity. It was only natural that I returned to this place to find a nice little horse and renew with this hobby which is close to my heart.
I started riding quite young. My first experiences were with small ponies when I was about 10 years old. I had found a club in the Jura which organized camps and since my mother was slow to register, I took the steps with a friend to participate in my first camp in October. I really liked this experience, there were about 30 of us children with very few rules and we rode ponies all day in the forests of the Jura: pure happiness. At that time, we were riding Haflingers without a saddle, they are ponies from the Jura region who are very sure-footed.
Subsequently, it was with my god father that I continued my learning. We were riding in Burgundy from where my father is from. It remained a very fun and above all very free practice. We did a lot of walks and I remember very well the great gallops in the fields as well as 2-3 memorable falls !!! My godfather was an excellent rider and also a very wise man who taught me a lot about the importance of the relationship between a rider and his horse. I feel very fortunate to have received his advices and some of his words still resonate in my mind today.
Then came a little more academic practice in different riding schools in Switzerland, a few jumping competitions and my first horse. It was a little black and white mare named Fantasia. She was fantastic. I had to part with Fantasia at the birth of my daughter in 2007 in order to entrust her to a rider who was more available than I to take care of her.
For 3 years, my son has been horse riding steadily and I started slowly joining in during his practice. After a break of almost 2 years, the call of an "Out for a Spin" brought me back to this passion. So it was with great pleasure and stiffness that I went back to the saddle.
Horse riding is a sport that can be practiced in a variety of ways. For me, the importance is the relationship you have with your horse, it's that feeling of freedom and going back to basics. I have done a lot of practice in a little known activity called TREC (compass horse riding technique). The principle is simple, you are on horseback in a sparsely populated region, and you have to reach checkpoints with only a map and a compass as tools. We do about 60 kilometers a day and the “threat” of having to sleep under the stars if we get lost is real !!!
Today my ride will be a little less "wild". “Trombone” is a horse that I have been riding since this summer. I am fortunate to live in the countryside, in an area where there are a lot of rides and especially great walks. We are on the border between the cantons of Geneva and Vaud, a few meters from France. There is still a lot of space here, the terrain is rather flat. To the east there is Lake Geneva and to the west the Jura with all its watch manufacturers.
My horse is obviously happy to go out for a walk. He neighs and has his ears moving back and forth watching for every sound. It is a fantastic time to go outdoors, in fact, on horseback we do not scare off wild animals and we are very often lucky enough to be able to see deers, wild boars or hares. The sun is still quite hot and its reflections enliven the dial of this Tudor Marine Nationale.
But why a Tudor MN to ride a horse?!? Indeed, the question is legitimate.
My very first crush on a vintage watch was a Tudor ref 9411, almost the same reference as the present 9401. The difference between the two watches is the absence of the date. Both share the same deep blue dial, square indexes and snowflake hands that have given the watch its nickname. The first Tudor submariner appeared in 1954 with the reference 7922. In 1969 Tudor introduced a second series of Submariner characterized by a new automatic caliber and above all by a dial design. The references 7016 and 7021 featured square indexes and hands that were quickly nicknamed “Snowflake” by collectors. The Tudor logo evolved at the same time and from 1969 the shield, synonymous with resistance and reliability replaced the rose. In 1976, the references 9411 appeared, my favorite and the undated reference 9401. The two references had evolved in terms of their movement with the introduction of a caliber equipped with a stop second for more precise time setting and above all 4 combinations of dial and bezel design. The blue dial with the blue bezel being the combination that best represents this era.
Almost from my birth year, my Tudor Snowflake remains one of my watches I love to wear the most. It is therefore quite naturally that my choice fell on this very beautiful reference 9401. I find the absence of a date very attractive and I think that it brings more balance and better readability to the dial. It is easy to imagine that professional divers in the French Navy favored dial readability over date information. Indeed, this watch is also a military watch used by the French Navy. The reliability and precision of the Tudor Submariner were quickly recognized by the armies and selected to be part of the diving missions. It is known that the French army was using Tudor watches from the late 50s but it’s only in the mid-70s that we saw for the first time the engravings M.N. complemented by the year on the caseback of a reference 7016, which is the predecessor of the references 9401 and 9411. Reference 9401 with blue dial and bezel is the most representative watch used by the Marine Nationale. The present example is engraved with M.N. 80.
Funny anecdote, I only managed to get my father once on a horse and this experience resumed in him falling and breaking two ribs. But as he was part of the French Navy in his youth, I found it nice to use his sailor's beret to illustrate the provenance of this watch. He served on L’Alsacien for a couple of year at the end of the 50s. Baptized on June 28, 1955, the fast escort L’Alsacien was launched on January 26, 1957. This escort was admitted to active service on August 27, 1960, and assigned to the 3rd flotilla of fast escorts (FER) based in Toulon.
Here are the personal reasons that prompted me to select this superb Tudor reference 9401 Marine Nationale from the GWA XIV sale to go horse riding. The robustness of this watch also gave me peace of mind when I went out!
Thank you Julie from the Manège de la Sallivaz for hosting us during the day.
Photo Credit: © Jess Hoffman