730 Days!

I did it, 730 days of blipping without missing a day! When I reached my 365, I said that I didn't know if I'd continue to blip every day, but I'm addicted and haven't been able to stop. It's getting harder though, and some days I really don't know what I'm going to find, but I guess in the winter that's bound to happen. I love reading your journals, and appreciate the support you give me, and I've formed some very good friendships out of many of you that I've met. There's still plenty of you that I hope to meet, and I've said it before, but I'll say it again, the Blip Community is fantastic!

Today I'd planned to carve 730 in the sand, but with the continuing storms that wasn't possible. Then I was contacted by The Sussex Pony Grazing and Conservation Trust who I'm a volunteer with, and they asked if I was available this morning to help catch some of the Exmoor ponies at Birling Gap. Due to the adverse weather and recent collapse of the cliffs, they needed to move them to another site. I took the waterproof camera with me as that fits in my pocket, in the hope that I'd get chance to get some decent photos.

I turned up at 9.30am along with 8 others, and our first job was to build a Corral to herd the ponies into if we were successful in our mission. We then set off in search of the 12 ponies, and it became a game of chase - as soon as we got close they ran off in another direction. We split up so that we had all corners covered, but the ponies were clever and jumped Gorse bushes to get away from us. I've never run up and down hills as much in a long time! Anyway, we finally got them into a small paddock area we had made, and then had to herd them into the Corral. I fell in the mud trying to block them, but we managed to contain them, only to realise that two had escaped! We had 10 safely fenced in and then had to go back as they didn't want to leave the other two on their own.

We were lucky all morning with the weather and although there were very strong winds which we battled against, the rain held off, but eventually the wind became gale force and the rain came, so we had to abandon our search. The 10 ponies were loaded onto the truck and taken to their new home, and the other two are still out there. Monty, the guy in charge said that he'll go back for them another day.

I'm completely shattered, it was much harder than going to the gym, but it was great fun and nice to work as part of a team. And I'm pleased to say that I obviously passed the initiation test, as Monty said that he will now put me on the regular rota for keeping an eye on the ponies near us :-)

So after all that, my blip today had to be of these four legged beauties, and thanks to Jinglyjan, I have the addition of a lovely red balloon on my picture :-)

Thanks once again for your friendship, and thanks for putting Louis on the Spotlight yesterday - you're a lovely bunch!