Black Beauty

Thank you for your comments Jayne and Bonitaj, I have loved riding and horses and was at first scared when for the four years I spent at a friends boarding school, my mother put me down for riding, but oh what a feeling flying along on a horse, they were of course ponies to be correct, but never mind. And the jumps, close to flying was that feeling, you and the animal moving as one over the hinders. We rode all around the fields and woods of Gloucestershire in England, beautiful Cotswolds with their ochre coloured Jurassic limestone houses and roofs, their great beech woods and huge horse-chestnut trees in the meadows where we climbed. But to return to the Black Beauty of Anna Sewell, that was a book and we loved it, my sister and I, I haven't ever seen a film and as it was just as vivid for me in my own imagination I don't need to either. The horse is a most wonderful, beautiful intelligent being, which we humans have used sometimes cruelly, always they have had to be our servants, there are a few herds left, of wild horse and ponies, even in GB, where I saw them charge round the hill on Dartmoor on a wind-blown day with dramatic grey skies above, how wonderful that sight was, I shall never forget it. Thank you again and cheers to the horse. Ann. Here's my own mother's poem about riding:- Maisie Young: 1933 I ride on my horse to the crest of the hill And I gaze at the country below The river fast flows beyond the old mill To fields where the marguerites blow. I feel in the wind the sweet scent of grass The salt air wafted up from the sea I hear the birds flutter and call as I pass The clatter of hoofs under me.