We turn up early today as the farrier has come to shoe the horses and for some unknowen reason we have to come at nine.I am glad as the weather was fine and did not turn nasty till the afternoon.

Trigger was my mount for today as Misty  was being shoed.Pam had Butch so it was a boy day.

We were surprised to find the woods and valley not as wet or boggy as one might expect after all this rain.Just as well as butch hates the river spot when it floods,he dipped Pam into the river here once and calmly walked all way back to the stables without her.we took the route up to the

dips and trig point .Here the Exmoor ponies took

a  liking to trigger to which I had to wave at them madly to back off,these were the young ones the nosey ones.There were schoolchildren out map reading ,they were well behaved compared to last year even if they left the gate open.No wonder the cows were nowhere to be seen ,escaped no doubt again.The ground up on blackdown was very wet and boggy under hoof and deep puddles had to be negotiated with care.A good hack and the ponies had their carrots .

I have not written for awhile and things have changed again for the better .my mate misty and I are back together riding the mendip hills.She is not the fastest thing on four legs but she suits me .We are off wandering the paths of blackdown and the surrounding woodland with either butch or fern.
The loggers have at last gone and left barren spots where trees once were,leaving the paths unregonisable .They have to retun for the logs ,hopefully not when we are around.Over the years the paths have changed and the on going of growing trees alters the landscape.for example we use to jump logs in one dense forest spot and now its nowhere to be seen,just replanted trees taking thier time to grow.
we have been up on the fields behind rowberrow fort,we call it the sheep fields.Here you can canter through 4 fields(it may be more)straight and either turn and come back as we do or contuine down to rowberrow warren hamlet.The views are stunning from here and very qiute.Hopefully our next hack will be in better weather,lets hope so.