Although I was happy with the loan arrangement for my ponies at Hook Common, the Trust suddenly insisted that I switch to a Grazing Licence which contained no formal provision for the checking of the ponies or what would happen in an emergency. Moreover it meant that once a year, for a period of twenty-four hours, the ponies would have to be moved off the land to somewhere else to ensure that the Trust were not setting up a tenancy. This would have been very distressing for the ponies. What with that, and the fact that I was being expected to cover the ponies for any damage they did if they escaped from the Reserve - which remember has 30 entrance gates for the public and some extremely fast roads running around it - felt a bit rich when the fencing was their responsibility. The alternative was for the Trust to buy the ponies off me for a £1! Being fifty miles away from the ponies suddenly felt like a long way away.
The end result is that they will be coming home on the 1st July, or thereabouts, having spent almost exactly a year on the site. For me and for them it has been an amazing adventure, and I have appreciated the quietness and wildness of a site that seems improbable within its noisy confines. At times it has been quite a test for the ponies - the insects, drought, two weeks of extremely hard frost, and then torrential rain meant that seventy-five acres of rough grazing was becoming insufficient for their needs, and it was a fine line between holding on for the grass and taking them home. Luckily the grass came through in the nick of time since the triple SSSI status of the land meant they could only receive a bale of hay on the one day that it snowed.
I think that Jack would have to have come home at the beginning of the winter this year anyway. This is his first 'wild' forray since he was a foal, and as he turns twenty-six and his teeth are being worn away, he is going to need mollycoddling; similarly, Patsy, who is younger but due to being entirely wild all her life has never had her teeth rasped. Maybe I should attempt to tame her this summer and see if I can fit her in for her first dental appointment. In any event I am looking forward to gathering all of my animals to me.
