Whilst on ebay...

[glenatron]

Whilst on ebay the other day sleepsy_mouse spotted a surprisingly cheap, if old and battered horsebox. The sellers were very frank about it's failings and suggested anyone interested should come and see it before the auction ended- they could do any day but Saturday as they were going off to Guildford that day for a show. Guildford being about ten miles from us we figured it might be worth a look.

When someone says they are bringing their horses to a show, you don't necessarily expect them to be doing this with them:

Or this:

Or this:

Let alone climbing right around ( as in down the side, under the belly and back up the other side ) an Andalusian stallion at flat-out gallop.

All of this to a classic rock soundtrack. Basically you are looking at sleepsy_mouse's dream show.

Turns out our sellers were members of the Rocking Horse Productions display team.

The outcome being that we got to watch some genuinely outstanding stunt riding, then check out an old but solid horsebox that they picked up as a stopgap and has been taking them round the country to shows and filming gigs for the last year.

That was last weekend. Today I have just driven said lorry back here from Yeovil. It's noisy, the steering is an object reminder of exactly power-steering was invented, the gearbox is like stirring porridge, the fuel guage moves in time with the indicators and the whole thing is just a little nervewracking, but it got us home and it's a horsebox and we could afford it. That adds up to a small to medium sized miracle and removes one of the biggest problems we have had with our horses over the last few years. No more having to phone around desperately looking for transport or having to do everything to someone else's timescale. No more feeling anxious if the pony looks like taking a few minutes to load. It won't be cheap to run and I'm sure there will be plenty of other things to worry about ( I find driving horses around pretty stressful at the best of times ) but we have our own box and that is pretty much awesome.

Comments

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

The only other thing that big I've driven was the lorry we hired ( from just next door to evil_c's place ) to get to the Tom clinic and this is a lot more basic. Nonetheless it stops and goes and fits the horses -for us that's a pretty big deal.

We thought on getting a 4x4 and a trailer, but really we can't afford to have three cars and we can't afford for one of our regular cars to be that expensive to run, not with petrol already at around $8.60 per gallon and only set to rise. Might as well keep small cars and have a big old bus for the ponies.

It's the largest class of vehicle you can drive on a regular driver's licence here in the UK and actually a few years after I passed my test they changed it so the biggest thing you can drive is now a 3.5 tonne van.