February 2010

[Sweder]

Happy Ash Wednesday everyone.
For lent this year I shall mostly be giving up rambling, rambunctious, repetitive run reports (and, for that matter, gratiuitous alliteration). Mostly.

Awoke from a steamy ménage à trois with Lady Ga Ga and Lilly Allen to find the sun up and beaming out of a clear blue sky. The morning mist was burning off the downs as I dashed downstairs, pulling on my gear along the way, to catch a fleeting glimpse of the last dancing whisps as they took flight. My nefarious tryst had left me exhausted. Try as I might I couldn't muster a gear change, settling into a casual lumber as the sun kissed my back across the western hills.

Cresting the hill before Blackcap I was drinking in the wonder of the day when a movement up ahead stopped me in my tracks. Trotting easily up the slope, steam rising from their brown velvet backs as they rose from the shadows, came around thirty Exmoor Ponies. They're back! And how apt, just as I'm chugging my way through their homeland on Le Jog

I first encountered these soulful equines last year, enchanted then as now by their soft dark eyes, shimmering flanks and gentle countenance. They're part of a Sussex Pony Grazing and Conservation initiative, and they're most welcome in our hills.



It dawned on me as the tribe trooped slowly past that someone might well have cocked up. The electric fencing that last year kept the horses penned in (they 'thrive on the nutrient-poor herbage which is often unpalatable for modern domesticated breeds of cattle and sheep' which means their chomping needs to be directed towards said unwanted flora) was back in place but this merry band of foragers were on the open hillside, free to roam with impunity across the downs.

5 miles, 46 minutes.
Track du jour: The Boss, Born To Run