Last weekend

Last Saturday I met up with shanks01 ( currently king of heartbreak ) and we headed off to Wales to enjoy a bit of meeting fellow lame non-going-to-gathering folks.

In Pontypool we met kittens who were full of pouncing and got them overexcited then stole their humans and went off to Swansea where we learned a valuable life lesson about the reasons that people don't make ice lollies out of jelly, those reasons mostly being to do with the fact that they are minging.

In the morning we slept until lunchtime then went for manky greasy Uplands Cafe breakfast which was exactly as it should be.

( The visit included playing on the beach )

It was really good to see all the welsh guys and it certainly made missing the Gathering a lot easier. Special thanks to shiva_matimbres for being an excellent host in spite of the jelly-pops idea and for making Shanks clean the stinky fish he brought for the barbecue outside.

Perils of our tack room

The sonic mouse repeller that our friend Liz bought for the tack room is working a treat. The tackroom dustbin is about two feet from the mouse repeller and on Wednesday it looked like this:

I'm pretty sure that little character is a wood mouse.

In this case the binbag had slipped down and the mouse was trapped. Often they just decide to go and play in there when it's full and suddenly jump out at you when you go to change the bag...

Hey, horsey people in the south-east...

If anyone is north of London and wants to do something interesting around the 12th-15th of September, Tom and Sarah are doing a clinic in Shillinghurst, Hertfordshire. I'm kind of thinking of you here, skiesfirepaved because I don't think it's too far from you and you'd really enjoy it. More here.

The other side of London we have Steve Halfpenny coming back for another clinic from 19th-22nd of September over near Tunbridge Wells. Steve is a literally brilliant horseman and I really strongly recommend coming along to watch. There may even be a rider place remaining if you know someone who feels like taking their horsemanship up a few levels- it's not cheap but learning from Steve has changed everything as far as I'm concerned and I simply cannot imagine a better use for my money. Anyways you can find more here if you're interested.

I've ridden on clinics with both these teachers and they're fairly well documented back on my Clinic reports tag.