Thelwell days

These pictures of the crazy pony-mad days of Thelwell bring back many memories. For me, legend has it, that I was put on the back of a cow walking across a field on the way to my Christening! After that, whenever staying with my grandmother and uncle on the Quantocks, I was taken out on a pony and lead over the hills for miles. In Weymouth too, where we lived, Saturday mornings was the time for a ride in the back streets of the town by the harbour and along Radipole Lake with Cynthia Fletcher who owned a few riding ponies with her father. A few years later, having given up ballet (!), a friend and I were filling our Saturday mornings by taking the train to Dorchester to ride with a proper riding stables run by a Mr and Mrs Barnes. Mr Barnes always dressed in a grey jacket and breeches with a grey bowler hat and riding crop in hand, he used to blow out through his teeth with a whistling sound, apparently to prevent the horse dust from getting to his chest! Pony trekking on Dartmoor, riding at school and eventually owning a Welsh Mountain pony for a few years to ride around the countryside with friends, I then became too tall to ride small ponies and with the graduation to horses I lost interest. Ponies have such amazing personalities and come in all colours, shapes and sizes and I found horses all together a different kettle of fish.