The Great British Summer

When we told people we were moving back to the UK they all said "Why? The weather is terrible...."

But no, not this year. After a very mild winter with no snow at all, and me worrying about being able to fight my way through huge drifts on treacherous country lanes down to the horses in the Kangoo (which has been known to get stuck on nothing more than some wet grass), not a single flake. So much for my argument that we'll NEED a 4 x 4 here in the winter (which would incidentally be able to tow the horse trailer I haven't got yet either)......

And now, well, summer is here. We've had fabulous weather for weeks. Yes, the odd torrential downpour/thunderstorm, but apart from that wall to wall sunshine. And flies, ticks and mosquitoes.....but at least we didn't need to break out the fly masks back in April like we did in the Dordogne.

So the horses are having a bit of a holiday at the moment as it's just too warm to expect them to do much, and unlike in France, it's humid, which is yuk.

They don't seem to mind :-)

Unfortunately for Tari, the downpours mean too much grass, so she has to have a muzzle on most of the time. Doesn't stop her eating though ;-)

So normal service will resume when it's a bit cooler - and we haven't got to wrangle the NO who finished school today *sigh*

White Horse Two......Kilburn

I have always been fascinated by the white chalk horse figures on UK hillsides, and I keep sying I must go and visit them all. We have managed to see a few of them including the very unusual Uffington White Horse a few years ago, but it's not so easy when you don't live in the country.

But now we do, and the Wiltshire ones aren't far away at all, so we really must get on with it. However, as we were up in Yorkshire this weekend visiting friends we decided to go and check out the only White Horse in the north of England, at Kilburn, near Thirsk.

The Kilburn White Horse was cut in 1857, apparently by a local schoolteacher and his pupils and on a clear day can be seen from as far away as Leeds. Unfortunately for us, as it is often grim ooop north, we got wind and rain and fog - definitely not a clear day :-/

So, pictures on the web show me that the horse looks like this when viewed from the village:

When we got there, we could barely make out the side of the hill.

We  followed the signs to the car park below the horse, from where again the good old internet shows me you can see most of it:

I, however, only managed to get this less than edifying picture:

Ah well, at least we found it. Maybe we'll go back sometime when the weather is better! In the meantime, here is an aerial view of the horse by those brilliant photographers at Last Refuge

.....taken on a sunny day!

For more about the white chalk horses in the UK, I can recommend this site.

What's going on with the weather?

We've been here in south west France for ten years. Every year we have been able to do lots of great outdoors stuff in February becasue this is not the UK and we get good weather......right?

Not this year. This year is has been so wet we have been reduced to hacking on roads only so we don't end up skating on horseback :-/

We usually do a ride to a local lake in February, but it's far too wet to use the tracks in the woods. I had a quick look through my photos from the last ten years and here are some pics of previous February weather

So here we are, Feb 2003, our first full year in France, my two old dogs Paddy and Roisin in the sun:

Feb 2004, before I had my own horse, riding Gimy, my friend Marianne's Trotter, not actually sunny but look at the nice dry ground:

Feb 2005, with Gimy and Marianne's TB, Faco, in a not at all muddy field......

Feb 2006, my first year with Gandalf, he was having a hooley with Gimy, blue skies:

Feb 2007, Ali and her pony Flecha, more sun, nice dry ground:

Feb 2008, we rode the horses to the lake for a picnic, sun:

Feb 2009, back to the lake:

And again in Feb 2010, cold but sunny:

February last year, bit of a blip, we actually had snow, but the sun was still out!

This year? All I have are lots of photos of filthy, soggy ponies hacking out in the rain....

Ah well, it can't go on for ever, can it?

Weather!!!

After several nice cold but sunny days when I couldn't ride due to teaching and Éowyn wrangling, this morning I had a couple of hours free.....and the heavens opened. Typical.

Nice rainbow though........

A wet walk

Took Gandalf and Skyfaxa out for a walk today, it has rained all day so we all got pretty soggy.......

they didn't seem to mind, especially as we found some nice grass for them to munch!

Gandalf even went as far as paddling in a puddle, he usually hates getting his feet wet!