Dead Weight

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No foot, no horse. The classic advice to a buyer. Without 4 sound feet, you ain't going anywhere, because however much power the animal may have, delivery is through the feet.. Obama is looking very trendy in his shiny new old mac hoofboots and we have been mucking about shopping in Brecon while I try to redesign the trailer to get shot of a whole load of weight. And this is where the whole foot /engineering bit comes in.
The saddlechariot puts no load on Obama's back, and unless I foul up loading the trailer big time, the trailer puts no weight on his back either. The Saddlechariot and trailer are running on the same 16x6.50x8 tyres, on plastic rims bored out to take 20mm sealed bearings. Essentially they are kite buggy Big foot assemblies, though not the mega Big Foot which I have on the wheelchair version. The rolling resistance is minimal, but we set off from Wales and in addittion to unpronounceable place names, Welsh roads go up and down like a yo yo.
All you cave dwellers whizzing past in your high speed, airconditioned, overpowered, soundproofed, fossil fuel burning caves only notice the hills because the scenery is tilted against the windows. But on foot, and when relying on someone else's feet, you notice the gradient, and it starts to really matter.
I am really lucky to have two foot experts, this is not a team of highly trained, extremely altitudinally challenged dwarfs, this is two guys who really understand feet, and before the metrication freaks decide to make me the latest metric martyr, whatever they may say, I have two feet, not 600mm and Obama has four feet and not 1200mm.
Patrick Meyer is Cheltenham based, and training as an equine podiatrist, without doubt the worst offence perpetrated on the English Language by any profession for years. But despite the perfectly ghastly job description, he is a guy who is up to date with all the latest stuff. At the other end of the scale is Nick Sanders who makes a major performance of pretending to have either forgotten, or never bothered to learn, or been unable to read the tin, on all subjects to do with horses. He doesn't do equestrian because he tries to avoid using words he can't spell. However he is pretty good with most words up to and including four letters.
Now Obama gets it pretty easy with two experts around because they both want to ensure he has an easy time, and I want to ensure I stay friends with both, and get Obama back on the road asap.
So Patrick is looking at the feet and contemplating the effects of the surface on the sole of the foot, and Nick is looking at the same feet and suggesting that Patrick is dead right on the problem, but the cause is not impact from the bottom, relating to the road surface, though that is what is causing the current discomfort, but that the problem comes from the bones pushing down on the sole internally, and bruising from the inside out.
I am the one who was actually there with Obama while I am fully prepared to admit, Obama did the grunting. But I walked the whole way, and I can see the damage the surface did on my £5 Milletts mock crocs, and it isn't much. But I also know what my legs felt like after climbing Symonds Yat at the end of three days of travelling and that last climb was quite something.
Now all the fancy bearings in the world don't change simple engineering, and hauling 110kg of trailer up hill, is work, and while the load is taken on the traces running through the collar, so through Obama's body and down to his feet. So his leg bones are pushing down into his hooves and it is the connective tissue on the hoof wall and the sole and the frog that finally transmit the load.
Hoofboots certainly help, but stripping down the dead weight on the trailer is a crunch issue, which conveniently brings us back to Cobbetts Rural Rides as Dead weight was a big issue with Cobbett who used the term to refer to tax eaters, all those who lived off the work of the rural labourers, and did nothing for it, Stock Jobbers, placemen, etc draiwng huge expenses for doing not a lot.
I keep thinking there is something here that links into the recent news but it keeps eluding me.

Back to Cobbett and a Desert Island.

I ended the first page/entry/chapter whatever of this blog saying I would return to the issue of Cobbetts Rural rides and then made absolutely no reference in the second. Now, on the third I am going to tell you this would be better read in the right order which will really get to you if you have started on page/entry/chapter /issue 11.

I could insert this bit as a header, I think they are called, but it isn't important enough to annoy you with on every page so I will continue to write as if this was a book running in one direction while fully aware that is a blog running in the other. The sequence isn't really that relevant as the closest literary analogy is not Cobbett's “Rural Rides”, though I have nicked the title, some of the rage and the topic, the closest analogy is Hunter S Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" with the obvious difference that instead of a 300lb Samoan Attorney for company, I set off with a 500lb pony called Obama whose breed I refuse to discuss on the grounds that concentrating on such details is racist.

And the vehicle isn't a "fireapple red convertible" but a Saddlechariot and trailer tent of my own eccentric design.

But being me, I am contemplating taking the angle grinder to the trailer tent and seeing just how much weight I can lose. Current weight, 110kg target weight 50kg.

But before we get into technical vehicle details, and ignoring for the moment "Fear and Loathing" let's get back to Cobbett. And I am heading back with Obama to Brecon's brilliant secondhand bookshop to pick up another copy of "Rural Rides. My first secondhand paperback copy has only done about 100 miles and its back is broken, and shedding pages fast. While I can quote "Fear and Loathing" from memory, I have only just started reading Cobbett and need to go back to the book to get the quotes something approaching right.

Cobbett rode through southern England between 1820 and 1830 commenting on the crops as a farmer, on the soil and the rocks beneath as a farmer and a traveller, on the rookeries because he liked them, on the churches because he despised their senior management while remaining a good Protestant whose support for Catholicism has opened my eyes to its virtues, but on the people, he commented because he cared. He had served time in the army supporting his country, and in prison supporting the people of his country, and in parliament doing the same.

His comments on politics and placemen, City gambling and feathering one's own nest, would fit today's newspapers without editing and would slide past unobserved as totally accurate, totally modern, but his concern for the rural population is out of date.

I have been out and I have looked. It's too late, they are extinct.

Go out into the country, and find the rural population. Cave dwellers in their houses stuff the villages and the roads are full of mobile, highly mobile, caves which whistle through lanes like moles which travel their tunnels hoovering up the worms that have got in and found there is no way out of the moleskin polished floor and sides of the tunnels.

Obama and I have got as far as Symonds Yat, only 40 or so miles as the crow flies, and day after day, (you forget that out of your highly mobile and seriously lethal mobile caves, that from Brecon to Symonds Yat is 6 days travelling) I notice the total lack of people in the country. Parliament debates the right to roam, they should make it compulsory. Before anyone starts any nonsense about the impact of walkers and cyclists and riders and horsedrawn vehicles, get out there and look. I will stand by my statement that the majority of the people I saw outside their houses or cars or narrowboats in the rural areas between Brecon and Symonds Yat, were Polish (I guess, I thought I was hearing a welsh community at first, but I don't think the Welsh community relies on gangmasters to keep them working, and i say Polish because I can't spell half the eastern european countries) asparagus pickers, and they were all in one field. That is over 50% of the total outdoor human population of the 100 square miles at the least, that I must have looked over as Obama and I amble our leisurely way.

It is one of the strangest sights of the trip, an eight row asparagus harvester, with crazy all wheel steering, a driver and a couple of overseers wandering round on the 8 row platform, and below the platform harvesting arms, that move with human grace and skill cutting the asparagus. Then you realise that under the platform are pods to hold a man lying prone per row and the arms are human. Mechanised man is with us. An 8 man Cyborg crawling across the face of England to supply luxuries to the rich, and the labels will say English grown, and the diners will sit back in their luxury and think they are supporting English farming and English farming communities. (This isn't a rant about immigrant labour, the friendliest greeting I got in Brecon was from a charming Taxi driver whose name is unpronounceable and that is by Welsh standards, and I will dig out his photo with Obama in the very first week of his training and put it up. I welcome ANY human being in the English countryside without any sort of concern over minor details like nationality.)

But at least these pickers are outdoors, they are the people in a landscape without figures. I stopped to photograph them, not because they were Polish, or because they were asparagus pickers, but because they were people, and in the English countryside people are sufficiently weird you stop, take the vehicle off the pony, dig around in your trailer for the camera and photograph them in driving rain because “Wow! There are people!”

This is a desert island and in Cobbetts day it wasn't, but he warned us, he said what was happening and although we were taught about him at school, I didn't read him.

Now I am reading and re reading, to see where we went wrong.

Cobbett commented on people and he commented on rookeries. In my 100 miles of rambling from Brecon to Libanus one way and to Symonds Yat the other I have only seen 4 rookeries. We have driven the rooks from our countryside which destroys one of the sights and sounds of England, the rooks coming home to roost against an evening sky. When Cobbett rode across Englandd he commented endlessly on the people he saw, the people he talked to, the people he saw all around.

Today he would rage at what has been done to the rural population he loved, who worked the land, and understood it, understood the soil and the crops and the weather, who put their own food on their own tables, though that was already dying as the Great Wen sucked the lifeblood of rural England.

Today he would see what he prophesied in full flower. A desert island. It is deserted. If you don't believe me, come and walk with me and Obama.

But all is not gloom and desperation. There are little pockets of life. With any desert when you sit quietly and contemplate the emptiness and the sterile beauty, signs of life appear.

Unless I get distracted by Obama's horrid habits, I will return to this and tell you about the hidden pockets of rural life, and where to find them, and join them, and help them grow, and maybe the rooks will come back too. I'll even tell you where my favourite rookery, under the Wellingtonia is located, but of course since this is a blog and you are reading in the opposite direction to my writing, you haven't reached that bit yet.

This is rather fun, if I am writing in one direction, and you are reading in the other do we meet in the middle or get further and further away from each other?

Back to Brecon from Symonds Yat.

I'm bloody footsore, tramping for miles with Obama, bad back and all. Obama gets footsore and suddenly the support team spring into action. Patrick Meyer is out looking at Obama's feet, tenderly cleaning them and studying them as if they were some freshly discovered artwork, Denise is on the blower to Theresa and Obama is whisked back to learn to handle the trendy new boots which Patrick has lovingly fitted in all the comfort of Rowanoak.

And still nobody has even thought of looking at my feet. A wise decision actually, I gave up looking at them some time ago.

So I'm back at the start before I have even got round to describing the start, which is pretty cool. Also inevitable. I have come to realise that Obama is the point of this trip, and even if he wasn't, my support network is built round a pony who manages to convince the rest of the world that he is loveable and cuddly.

He is pretty good, and that is the point of the trip. He isn't unusual, he is just another rescue pony, 11 hands ish,

hang on, why am I writing a sentence that will confuse the majority of my readership.

Ponies and horses are measured from the top of the withers, which just means the highest point of the body at the bottom of the neck. It is approximately the same as the bottom of the mane, the long hairs that grow on the back of the neck. And a hand is 4 inches. So when I say he is 11hands ish I mean 44 inches from the ground to the highest point on his body at the bottom of the neck.

It is actually a pretty meaningless measurement as I have found in years of fitting saddlechariots on ponies that the owners either don't know how tall their ponies are or lie about the subject. Heightism is rife and a pony used to be under 12hands, but they have upped the pony size to 13.2hh and then to 14.2hh as kids now expect to ride bigger and bigger animals, which brings us back to Obama, at 44" he is too small to make a MODERN riding animal, which is why he is with EMW. He was up for sale at Abergavenny market as a 6 month old foal, and fetched 28 guineas. (Another traditional term that allows the seller of a horse to add 5% to the price. A guinea is one pound one shilling, or £1.05 in todays money.) Under £30 for a sound little pony, but what use are they?

That is what this blog is about. Eventually I will describe the start, but first I need to set the scene a bit.

It is early january 2009, Obama is back with Equine Market Watch who originally rescued him from the market, having proved too difficult for his first placement. I'm the mad inventor of the saddlechariot looking for a suitable pony to train for work in City farms, and also for a chance to show what a Saddlechariot can do. Nick Sanders is happily running Rowanoak natural horsemanship yard in Brecon and I'm looking for a base.

So the start is a great day for Nick as he finally gets rid of me, but not before I have had a chance to watch a real horseman at work. I came to Rowanoak because Nick shares my whip free beliefs, I stayed because he is a really nice guy and a gentleman.

As a pony trainer, the criticism I hear most about myself is that I am too gentle. I don't get this from Nick as he is just as gentle, and with big horses, vastly more effective. So Obama has learned his trade at Rowanoak, with me trying to work out a new training method and mostly finding Nick has done it already, and is enough of a gentleman to let me find my own way, only helping when asked.

Actually the main reason Nick and I work together so well, is that when we are working together we can both think we are the smooth, suave, well dressed one of the pair.

By the time I set off, Obama knows Brecon backwards, and most of the residents know him. he has been everywhere, seen everything, so when I finally set out, I am pretty sure nothing will panic him.
His training has been mindbogglingly simple. I walk him round like a dog, and when people ask, "Why are you walking your pony round like a dog?" I answer, "because what is good enough for a dog, is good enough for a pony."
This is education, "ex ducere" to lead out, and leading out is what I do, and Obama has learned. And learned enough in four months for me to drive him solo, bitless, barefoot, whip and groom free, towing a camping trailer from Brecon to Symonds Yat and then his little tootsies feel tender so where back where we started, which funnily enough is where I started.

Maybe the next installment will describe setting out, but given the present record I wouldn't hold your breath.

The beginning but not where I started.

Sitting listening to the rooks squabbling in their rookery, with a new born calf in the field between the rookery and my camp, tree-creepers infesting the line of Wellingtonia under which I am sitting, chilling after a long day with Obama. It doesn't get much better then this, but then Obama is currently raiding the litter bins, and after scattering the contents he is now rolling in the mess he has created. If Obama was a dog, fine, but he is meant to be a pony.

We are camped somewhere unpronounceable, ie in Wales, and this is the blog of my trip with Obama from Brecon to Birmingham. Today isn't the start of the journey, that has happened three times already, and the last start day was Sunday, and I think this is Thursday.

Sunday was pretty laid back, ie a started at about 2.30 in the afternoon, nothing wrong with that, but the plan was to leave at 7 the day before.

The day before had been spent rebuilding the trailer that I had built the week before after the first test trip when I set off using two unsuccessful logging trailers welded together with a plastic barrel roped on top. Obviously it had to be improved and I have never traveled since, as far as I did those first three days. Gosh what an improvement. Day one Brecon to talgarth on the A470 to see the Harley Davidson rally, which finished a couple of hours before I got there, and then on to Trefecca to pretend I was camping at Siobhan and Andrews.

The A470 is an education, especially for Obama who was definitely anti bikes. After one party came past at speeds that make the large Hadron Collider unneccessary, Obama lost his nerve and set off up the embankment complete with Saddlechariot and camping trailer. I thought he might manage a perfect wall of death banked turn and really show the bikers something cool, but the embankment was too steep and I lost my nerve and pulled the ripcord. He relaxed as the vehicle released, so I brought him down and hooked up and on we went. Since then, bikes appear to be no problem, though I do still reassure him as they go past. But if bikes are no longer a problem, Cows are killers. I cannot imagine how Obama has reached six years of age and manages to pretend cows are not only terrifying, but really unusual.

Puddles are the other big problem in his life. Dangerous things puddles which I could live with but in the middle of the towpath, under almost every canal bridge is a puddle. To get saddlechariot and trailer through the towpath bridges is challenging anyway, perfectly possible, but there are only inches (2.5centimetres's) to spare Since the trailer contains all my kit, computer cameras and the usual rubbish I take with me, I like it to stay on dry land, which means Obama going through bridges, in the middle of the towpath.. But we are getting there.

Day two of my pre trip practice was from Trefecca to Bwlch, on to Llangydnir and back up the canal to Gilestone. Stayed the night in a huge tipi at Gilestone and set off for Brecon the third day.. Got home and decided to put all I had learned in those three days to making travel easier faster etc.

And set off again, but unfortunately at almost exactly 180 degrees off any course that might have Birmingham as its destination, But Ian of the beacons veggie Box scheme, hijacked me in Morrison's car park and persuaded me I didn't really want to go the right way so I set off past the Mountain Centre at Libanus for Ian and Theresa's farm. Only they would decide to grow high altitude vegetables. Surrounded by moorland whose vegetation spends its time sheltering from the wind behind anything stupid enough to stick upwards, is a vegetable garden, which seems to confuse the wind into ignoring it. That is the only explanation for how they manage to grow anything up there.

The other miracle is that Theresa hasn't collared the veg plot for more horses.

I got there for a late lunch. It would have been a normal lunch if i I had been on time but after setting off late, I met the chef at the Mountain Centre who collects MZ motorcycles. I have lead a pretty varied life and met a wide range of people but this was a first, and what I love about Ian and Theresa was that they accepted meeting an MZ collector as a valid reason to be late for lunch.

The fact that I lost a lynch pin in the gorse didn't help. Basically the new improved trailer looked far better than the old but had one minor problem, it didn't work. I had loaded up pretty casually as i knew I would have to go back via Rowanoak, so Nick could make more bad jokes about my inability to get going, and as an afterthought slung in the welder.

Well, you never know when a welder will turn out useful on a horse drawn journey, and when Ian and Theresa realised I DID have a welder in there, they got me to weld up the transport box on the tractor. It had seen better days, which is my pre emptive excuse for when my welds fail at the first use.

As I try to catch up with my blog, Obama is checking out the tent for anything that might be edible. I wish he could understand that after taking half a dozen apples, the remains of the carrots, my last two crispbread, and failing to get into two tins of sardines, which he could have had with my compliments, (God knows why I fell for buy one get one free, when I don't like the idea of one sardine let alone two. Well done Waitrose of Monmouth, but don't rely on the passing chariot trade to boost the sardine turnover. However I will be back as a very kind lady on the staff, offered to keep Obama company while I shopped.)

I really haven't managed yet to describe any of that first day, but I hope you are getting a flavour of the careful planning that has gone into the trip.

Odd though it may seem, this is a rerun of Cobbetts Rural Rides, hence "Rural Rides Again", the title, and if that doesn't put you off reading, nothing will. Cobbett was on a horse and riding with a servant. I am driving a pony, though Obama has me pretty well trained and his attitude is that "If i am going to walk all that way, he can!", so it is more of an amble. Cobbett was a noted politician, writer, agriculturist, an MP whose expenses were never questioned and a radical.

I am a bit radical, but I am amazed at the topicality of Cobbetts writing. Banks printing funny money, gamblers on the stock exchange losing their shirts and everyone else's, the Scots coming in and telling us how to run the country. Actually, the racism is the only jarring note in Rural Rides though it is vastly less offensive than the casual, and unnecessary racism in Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers or Bulldog Drummond.

So this blog is going to ramble off round England, pulled slowly by a pony called Obama, attached to a saddlechariot with a camping trailer Mark 3. In theory my route is from Brecon to Birmingham, but I am off on a detour to Cheltenham to see Patrick Meyer, who is keeping an eye on Obama's feet and let Obama take a break.

Currently we are camped with Mike and Denise, more mad friends of Ian and Theressa's who live on Symonds Yat.

Now the problem with journey planning is that when I see that to get from one side of the Wye, to the other side of Symonds Yat, is nearly a days journey, and nearly a days journey in the wrong direction, i don't let minor details deflect me. Just the name Symonds Yat is worth having on an itinerary, and the views are beautiful, yet oddly, the most memorable feature of reaching the top of Symonds Yat was the sound of children playing.

This is the first time I have heard children playing outside in a rural area, since I left Brecon.

This is part of a theme that resonates through Rural rides, and is coming home to roost in Rural rides Again.

Cobbett talked about the people he saw, and their condition and their problems. Over 50% of the people I have seen out of doors, while travelling from Brecon too Symonds Yat, are Polish Asparagus pickers and they were all in one field.

This is a desert Island, and we should be asking why. I suspect Cobbett has the answers.