Doing the rounds today so we checked up on the last remaining Thordale Shetland pony girls –  Lyra, Vitamin and Delia.  Two old Shetland pony mares and one young filly.

Obviously Lyra made her bee-line for her one love, Daisy.

I think it because they both have the same hair style and can relate to this.

I left them to bond.  It is what they both do best – their Mutual Appreciation Society.

Both of them are a pair of soppy dates.  Lyra doesn’t care about anyone else (human) like she does Daisy.   She always has done, even as a foal.  The rest of us never had a look in.

Mother and daughter are not very alike but still very close.  I think they always will be.  Vitamin will have no more foals and Lyra was the one she waited for all these years.  Two dead foals in succession and then Lyra, makes her extra special and wanted.  I would hate to split them up or split up Lyra from Daisy.

Meanwhile, Lambie has taken up residence under a table in the sitting room.  He is loving his daily walks and is a fully paid-up member of our family, despite what my OH says.

The Bear Grylls Challenge – as created by Daisy and participated in by Lambie (and Daisy coz he is not doing it on his own!)

This is tough-love Lambie physiotherapy and it will help make Lambie stronger in his legs.

No more sitting in front of the fire never moving, Lambie is up and at ’em for a good 30 minutes, over hill and down dale.

He is asked to jump, gallop and tackle a variety of obstacles invented by Daisy, which he does with aplomb and enthusiasm.  Look at him go!  I can see Lamb of the Year Show beckoning.

Accompanying this army assault course is Loki and somewhere at the back loitering with resentment, BeAnne.

We went down the track, back up the track (Jack’s walk) and then into the hill.

There were various stop-off points for nibbling moss and investigating (Lambie, not us) and all these Daisy had incorporated into the assault course schedule.

After climbing every mountain and fording every stream, we took Lambie into the school where Daisy was warming up Taktur, her Icelandic stallion, before his training.

Lambie and BeAnne sweetly sat together and watched like Mother and Son.

After 20 minutes, when Taktur was officially warmed up, they all stopped and got to know each other.  I had put Lambie on the upturned jump bucket in the hopes I could teach him some circus tricks.

Enjoy the Bear Grylls-Lambie Challenge.  He works very hard at it and is a determined little boy.

Heathrow airport at noon and I am leaving to go back home to Shetland.

I am not sorry to say goodbye to England but I am very sorry to say goodbye to my parents.  Door-to-door, it was 7 hours.  I managed the start of a migraine in Aberdeen but a bottle of water sorted it out. Instead of armrest wars, I sat next to nose-pick man.  Ew.   But, as Daisy says, at least he was self-contained and recycling!

Everyone was was pleased to see me home.  Lambie is much, much bigger.  I would say he has doubled in size.

He is wearing a collar now as it makes him easier to grab as he goes on his travels off to do some wickedness.  I sense he also has an attitude too.  Perhaps we are going through the stroppy teenage phase.

Lambie still looks to BeAnne and follows her.  She is teaching him his manners but as she doesn’t have many, it is not an arduous task.

They are almost the same size now.

I briefly saw some ponies and my heart lifted.  Life, as I know it, is back to my normal.  BeAnne, though, is a little stroppy with me for going away.

Mum and I went on an expedition to a mahoosive garden centre place in Bagshot this morning.

It really was an incredible place.  Do you know you can buy flip flops that have plastic grass for the soles?  Why?  What am I missing?  There were piles of them and Mum and I laughed,

Plants everywhere and beautifully presented,. You could build an instant garden if you had enough money.

Complete with Julius Caeser!

Instead we bought plants for Mum’s garden, which she spent the afternoon planting out.

And because I love this little chap, I bought him a furry thing because every Patterdale terrier should have one.

He was very appreciative and it instantly became his best friend forever!

I am home tomorrow and I love this little chap.  He is perfection and I will miss him desperately.  Since I arrived, he waits every morning outside my bedroom door to wake up. A darling lad.

A few more horses from the family stables.

This is Bucephalus who was completely restored by my mother.

Next is another horse who lives upstairs under a huge tapestry.  He is called Valentine and is very old.  There is a sidesaddle pommel which can be removed and positioned on the other side.  He is in his original state but has a new mane and tail.

The huge tapestry that hangs above Valentine was sewn by my mother over ten years ago.  It has many family connotations like flowers representing family animals and a portrait of our thousand year old oak tree in the  park.  It was sewn in the millefleur design and has to be kept away from direct sunlight.

Lastly, Phar Lapp who my mother commissioned and designed with Alec Kinane from Legends Rocking Horses.  Phar Lapp is an Arabian horse and probably one of the best modern rocking horses still to be made.

And do you know who this is?  Yup, this is BeAnne’s ancestor.

The children in this portrait clutching their BeAnne are my great grandmother’s first cousins, Dorothy, Jeff and Polly Barnard painted by their father, Fred Barnard, who was one of Charles Dickens’ illustrators.

Dorothy and Polly also featured as the girls in “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” by John Singer Sargent who found the light in the painting so hard to capture that he renamed it “Damnation, sIlly, silly pose”!