Yes, it's real

Ever since my first post I've been ever so slightly holding my breath, just in case it didn't pan out. But as of Monday this week, I have confirmed plane tickets so I think I can finally start to believe it. I'm leaving on the 6th September - less than a month away. So before I go on, I'll just recap on some of the things that have happened since my first posting.

Well, competition-wise I've had a few nice prizes, including an action packed weekend in Carmarthenshire, staying on a 'Holiday Park', and visiting some great locations. The best of my pictures are on Flickr. I've had a few other things, including a giant knife and fork. They're are a carving set, but being a vegetarian I'm not much called upon to carve things. Nice sharp knife though. I like knives, especially big sharp shiny ones. I also had a nice DVD player with a box set of 41 Crossroads DVDs. Never did watch those DVDs yet. Too busy watching Monty's Online Uni (more on that later probably, because it's fab).

And then of course, there was the bizarre co-incidence of the horses moving in. Only a matter of days before the LWE arrived, four horses moved into the field. The field behind my house had been empty since Princess and Nelly moved on. Princess was my horse, a daft clever sort of a horse who came to me aged 2 1/2 with wonky feet. Nelly was her friend, left behind when her owner moved away. When I became incapable of managing them through the long winters - pushing wheelbarrows full of hay up slippery slopes one-handed, falling splat on my face on many occasions and having to break pond ice and haul buckets of water into their drinking trough with cold wet feet - I took the hard decision to let them go somewhere else to live. They ended up moving to a fantastic farm run by the Brothers and Sisters at Skanda Vale where they are part of a herd and will live out their lives without ever being hurt or treated with anything other than loving care. I thought I'd be able to go and visit them there (and i can if I want to) but I've not been able to do it. I think I'd want them back - ridiculous and impractical though that is. So after they went, the field stayed empty for a few years, needing the rest after several years intensive grazing and I didn't think I would be able to have horses in my life again. That wasn't completely the case because by this time I was getting more into photography and particularly like taking pictures of horses and other animals, (more horse pictures on Flickr)  Earlier this year I'd decided to try and tack it out so that it didn't get overgrown with weeds but hadn't done much about it. Then Sam and Alex turned up looking for a place for their horses to graze as they'd been stabled all winter. So they moved in,

Psyche	Elvis
Moon and Squirt	and Josie

A few weeks later, Dolly the sheep and Dave the other sheep moved in as well. I'll save the pictures of these rather remarkable sheep for another day - I for one have never met a 13 year old sheep before, never mind two.

So there I was with horses back in the field and even with the offer of some riding as they were preparing at the time for a 25 mile archaeological ride, documented in the Riding the Trod site. I started to think maybe horses were coming back into my life and then that LWE arrived.