Tthe Sleepover Club on the Beach Read Online Free PDF

yelled. “Sleepover girls forever!”
    But when we reached the bottom of the hill, I jammed on my brakes.
    All I could say was “Oh, oh, oh!” I was totally all of a dither.
    “What’s up?” said everyone.
    “Ssh,” I whispered. “You’ll scare it!”
    I put my bike in the hedge and tiptoed over to a low five-bar gate.
    On the other side, grazing among the buttercups, was the loveliest Arab pony I had ever seen. Everything about him was lovely – his face, his dark liquid eyes, the way he moved. He still had the gangly legs and soft faintly fuzzy coat of a foal.
    My mates can be SO sensitive sometimes. I mean, they
like
horses, but they’re not crazy about them like I am. But they waited with amazing patience while I tried to coax him over.
    It was pretty obvious he hadn’t been broken in, and he was really nervous andskittish. Yet the instant I saw him, I’d felt the strangest bond.
    This might sound weird, so please don’t tell the others, but he was
exactly
like the horses I ride in my dreams. It was like I already knew how it would feel to ride him. And it was pure magic…
    Suddenly Rosie sneezed, and the pony gave this incredible buck, kicking up clods of earth. He galloped away to the far side of his field, making scared harrumphing sounds.
    I’ll come back tomorrow, I promised him silently. I’ll come by myself and we’ll have a proper talk.
    “Erm, sorry to spoil things, Lyndz, but I’m getting hungry,” said Rosie plaintively.
    “Me too!” Fliss sounded amazed. “Actually I’m
starving
,” she giggled.
    “Why don’t we ask Mum if we can take our fish and chips down to the beach?” I suggested. “Like a picnic?”
    “Excellent idea,” said Kenny.
    “Won’t they get cold?” Rosie shuddered. “Cold fish and chips is icky.”
    “We can go on our bikes,” I said eagerly.“We could put them in my bike basket and pedal like the wind!”
    Did you suss that I was being a girl in a book at that moment?
    My mates gave me startled looks. But Kenny just said. “You’re on. If it’s ten minutes’ walk, we should bike it in five easily.”
    We whizzed home at top speed, standing on our pedals.
    When we got back, we quickly put on some warmer clothes. It was getting really chilly. Then Mum drove us to a tiny village. Just a street really, with a few dull-looking cottages, a pub and a tiny and very shabby looking fish-and-chip shop. It didn’t look incredibly impressive from the outside, to be honest. But Mum swore this place was famous locally for its brilliant fish and chips, so we all crowded in.
    Ohhh! It smelled
wonderful.
I was seriously tempted to reach over the counter and grab a handful!
    Luckily Mum had no objection to us eating ours down on the beach.
    “So long as I get to eat mine in comfort,”she yawned. “It’s been a long day, so be back by eight, OK?”
    The instant we got home, we rushed off on our bikes. I was carrying our fish-and-chip picnic in my bike basket. I’d made sure to buy a big bottle of ginger beer at the fish-and-chip shop. You can’t have a real Thingybobby picnic without gallons of ginger beer. It’s like, a law!
    It was hard work cycling through the water meadows. Plus the lovely vinegary smells wafting from the basket were driving me insane.
    We bumped and jolted through the frothy cow parsley, past streams thick with flowering rushes. Finally we’d bumped all the way to a rickety wooden stile. To be on the safe side, we hid our bikes behind a tree.
    We all scrambled over the stile and went racing breathlessly over the sand dunes, dodging between gorse bushes and springy tufts of sea lavender.
    “How come gorse blossoms smell exactly like coconut suntan oil?” I puzzled aloud.
    But at that moment Fliss squeaked, “I can hear the sea!”
    “My lips taste salty,” said Kenny, sounding surprised.
    And at that moment we reached the top of the dunes. There it was – huge and glittering and completely awesome.
    Maybe you get bored with the sea if