TransHu Autumn 2013: Day Six
And here we are, sitting at the breakfast table on day seven, writing up the events of the penultimate day. As always, and certainly in retrospect, everything has passed very quickly; and nothing more so than the last day in the saddle. Our departure from Puivert at 09:15 was accompanied by rain, initially light but […]
TransHu Autumn 2013: Day Five
Just a short report today. Our departure from Comus was rapid and without problem. The first part is over quiet metalled roads; after the first col, we took to the rutted tracks again – and again 50cm snow! This is actually quite useful in slowing the herd and stopping any horse from attempting to overtake. […]
TransHu Autumn 2013: Day Four
A very long and tough day – therefore no blog last night. At 08:30 sharp Mr. Many’s minibus whisked us off through the Tunnel de Puymorens to reunite us with the horses. Either because of incidents or somewhat mismatched horses, there was some shuffling around but we were still on the road pretty rapidly. Lots […]
TransHu Autumn 2013: Day Three
At 9 sharp, everyone was in the meadow ready to catch, brush and saddle up their horse. At 10 the “caravane” was ready to depart. From La Pastorale at 1500m the route took us through Porté-Puymorens over the hairpins of the old road to the Col de Puymorens at 1915m. Contrary to previous occasions, we […]
TransHu Autumn 2013: Day Two
The rest of the group arrived just in time for breakfast and then it was all hands on deck rounding up the horses. Being spread over a few thousand hectares, that can be quite a job but luckily about 65 were on the lower slopes – but the last few had disappeared up the mountainside! […]
TransHu Autumn 2013: Day One
Actually day two since I started out yesterday afternoon, but since I didn’t arrive until 08:00 this morning, we’ll call this Day One. Actually a quiet day – people start drifting in from around lunchtime and find themselves in the middle of some activity or another. The main jobs today were to do with insuring […]
Transhumance d’Automne 2013
In less than four weeks we will have begun the 2013 edition of the “Transhumance d’automne”. Twice a year, a herd of ±70 horses, of which 15 are ridden, are led over the Pyrenees from Porta, in de Vallée de Carol to Denis in the Aude. This journey takes four days in the late autumn […]
When is it time?
I have already made mention in the social media of a horse that is cared for by one of my customers. A beautiful mare that actually belongs to a farmer but that has been tended to by my customer for some 16 years. Like so many people, my customer was convinced that – certainly after […]
Race to the Death
So, the verdict is out on the 2012 Grand National at Aintree. Everything possible had been done to insure a safe race. A result no doubt welcomed by organisers, authorities, owners and trainers alike. Sadly, it does not help Synchronized nor According to Pete, the two horses that died in the race; nor does it […]
Site Update
We’re rolling out a new multilingual version of the site in the next few days. The current means of language choice is not ideal and makes for difficult updating. If you notice we are offline, don’t worry – we’ll be back again very quickly. Hopefully within about 10 minutes!