This isn't the sort of story one could tell one's mates in the pub unless one had a very thick skin but I will share this with you good people.
Commuting from Richmond to Ripon yesterday on the motorcycle, I came upon a handful of stationary cars allowing about 30 horses and riders out of a field to my right. We were on a slippery bendy downhill B-road and I noted more horses and riders were gathering in the field as our queue of traffic moved off at the speed of the column of horses in front. No-one attempted to overtake; there wasn't enough visibility and there was such a quantity of livestock. I was within sight of the A1, my route south, so I hung back with the queue, not wanting to overtake under such uncertain circumstances. In the mirrors, more horses were pouring out of the field.
Clearly, the traffic had inconveniently broken up the horsey party because one beast came past me at a brisk trot and another caught up with it at a canter next to the car in front of me. This would have been fine except that we were on a 2-way white-lined road approaching a right-hand bend. Full marks to the oncoming Golf driver who sized up the situation in a blink and stopped instantly. The 2 overtaking horses assumed single file with some skidding and a spark or two and passed between the Golf and the van in front of me. I was concerned that the riders made such a rash move in the face of oncoming traffic to rejoin their mates.
For my therapy, please tell me that someone else has been overtaken by an animal.
Last edited by: hawkeye on Sun 20 Nov 11 at 11:27
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Oh yes, around 1978/9 climbing a not terribly steep hill outside the golf club at Lutterworth in the dead of night (heading for Tubby's on the A5), cold, foggy, 180 Gardner engine chugging away pulling me up the hill at probably 20 mph.
I became aware of something alongside the truck window peering in at me, cue buttock clenching visions of hades, then out of the gloom a magnificent fully antlered stag simply got his foot down overtook me giving me a full display of his beauty, then cut me up and vanished into the open land on the left at the top of the hill.
Fleeting rare moments have made the job worth doing for so many years.
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>> truck window peering in at me, cue buttock clenching visions of hades,
Heh heh... a sambhur (a large deer) trotted up and down the verandah of our house in Ceylon at night once when my father was away. My mother was alarmed by the sound of its hooves, and experienced a moment of stark terror when she saw its antlers through the window - no glass, just insect screens and slatted shutters.
A devout Catholic, she had the same thought as you gb. She also had a sense of humour and often told the story against herself.
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She also had a sense of humour and often told the story against herself.
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Most definately Catholic, even my Priest cousin has that wicked sense of self deprecating humour.
Some years ago one might have been driving a hired mini bus for a long distance funeral, and during the journey said cousin might have said...pure Irish accent to be added here...'is there something the matter with the speedometer on this vehicle?'
One might have replied that it might have become disconnected for a while, a stern silence followed which broke after about 30 seconds when he twigged and went into fits of laughter, the young boy i remember returned to his now worn but kind face.
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I was once burned off by a woman in a Datsun Cherry while I was in my Mk3 Spitfire :-(
There, I've admitted it now. Never been able to mention it before but I feel better now. The guilt has been with me since 1976.
:-)
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I live near a farm - arable and livestock. I pulled out of my sideroad one winters morning, still dark, to find two young Friesians in the middle of the road running towards me. I turned to sidelamps only to hopefully make me visible to them but not blind them. After a bit of hoof slipping on the asphalt, they slowed down and trotted past me. Looked in my rear view mirror and saw and heard a couple of farmhands running up the road in the dark. Now, these weren't full size but they were enough to easily give the car a nasty shunt. To be honest it was a bit like a dream, not really being fully awake. And they look so much bigger when you're sitting low in a car seat.
I had the same thing happen further down the road on another dark morning. There's a blind bend and adjacent fields. I came around this bend and was aware of the light suddenly being blotted out by this black mass. A full size bullock merrily eating grass on the wrong side of the fence and right next to the road. A bit worrying as they have lot's of weight and spindly legs, so could easily slide up your bonnet and take the windscreen out. Luckily the blind bend meant I was going slow and thankfully the great beast was just about out of the way :)
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I was unable to overtake a stray Ram once - narrow lane and he was sort of travelling in the same direction, I was chugging along behind him in a non-threatening way waiting for a convenient entrance to give him space. He clearly didn't take kindly to the car as at one point he turns to confront the car and put his head down as if to charge - dead hard around here !
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Many years ago now, but just near here, I helped my wife's farmer cousin move two or three hundred sheep about a mile down the A29, through a village, to some field or other where he wanted to put them. My role was to drive in front of them with main beams on, the wrong side of the road, making all the London bound traffic stop for the woolly bleaters.
Curiously enjoyable and satisfying, getting authoritatively in the way like that. You can see how certain aspects of police work could become addictive.
:o}
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>> I was unable to overtake a stray Ram once -
Loose sheep on the back lanes are an occupational hazard in my job. When I first started about 6 years ago, wasted a lot of shoe leather and breath trying to herd the damn things back into the correct field, or at least one in reasonable proximity to the farm. Soon gave it up as a bad job; collies are far more proficient at herding sheep than middle-aged lorry drivers.
Sheep, BTW, are noted for committing suicide in interesting and expensive ways, in fact the local farmers say that they're "born to die". Years ago on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, one of the locomotives clobbered a sheep which thought it could outrun a steam train; the crew picked the corpse up, took it back to Grosmont shed and set it up in the firebox of the next day's locomotive with its head sticking out of the firebox door. Frightened the life out of the unsuspecting trainee fireman who went to light up at 5 am the following morning!
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>> Sheep, BTW, are noted for committing suicide in interesting and expensive ways, in fact the local farmers say that they're "born to die".
Talking to a couple of London mod hooligans in the sixties, they described a visit they had recently made to the country. It had gone dark, then they had got a lot of mud on their suits and sharp pointed shoes. Then they had got hungry.
Stumbling on some sheep in a field, they had cornered one and tried to kill it with their bare hands and a small penknife (the only weapon they had, they confessed with an air of shame). But the sheep struggled and had thick wool and proved surprisingly hard to kill. So in the end they had given up trying to strangle and stab it and gone back to London by some means. It was a story that still makes me laugh when I remember it.
So: sheep may be suicidal, but you have to know what you are doing to kill one. My wife's farmer cousin doesn't keep them any more, but he has quite a lot of respect for their toughness and, yes, weirdly, intelligence.
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Another sheep story: in the 1980s, when I was an Africa hack, I knew some militants whose families lived in refugee camps in a harsh bit of the Sahara. A visit was arranged to England by various do-gooding and leftist-style groups, bodies and organizations here for some (rather lucky actually) children from those camps.
They had some time to kill in London and thanks to the generosity of my wife's family I invited them here, near where I live now, for a day in the country, and they turned up in a small bus. They were impressed by the size of the trees and enjoyed swimming in the pool, and in the evening we roasted a sheep for them in the woods. Another cousin made an attempt at halal slaughter, and the poor dead sheep, until decapitated, was apparently looking over its shoulder in a reproachful manner.
The point is that when the children, and some of their minders, saw the sheep roasting with rosemary and stuff inside it, they muttered and looked suspicious. It was so chubby by Saharan ovine standards that they thought it might be a pig. Once reassured though, they ate the lot with great enthusiasm. It was nice too.
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>>I was once burned off by a woman in a Datsun Cherry while I was in my Mk3 Spitfire :-(
Winter time was it? Perhaps you were on Summer tyres and she wasn't?
;>)
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Them Cherries had twin choke carbs - I had one as a loan car once and it could fly...
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>> Them Cherries had twin choke carbs - I had one as a loan car once
>> and it could fly...
Off the road usually.
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You're not far wrong, the handling was er..interesting..!
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Never mind the embarrassment of being overtaken by horses, sounds like the riders were being very irresponsible in a number of ways - but then I often come across irresponsible horse riders.
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...but then I often come across irresponsible horse riders...
The OP's patch is near the caravan and it's a very horsey area.
Most riders are responsible, but I've come across one or two who seem to think cars shouldn't be on the road when they are.
Having the top down on the CC3 helps communication.
The riders are less inclined to attempt intimidation when I look 'em straight in the eye.
I've heard of riders making complaints of due care and attention against drivers, which the police sometimes take seriously.
Things can get a bit sticky when it's the word of two or three riders against yours.
Worth bearing in mind that in a rider/driver tussle, the driver will likely be deemed to be in the wrong.
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>> Having the top down on the CC3 helps communication.
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>> The riders are less inclined to attempt intimidation when I look 'em straight in the
>> eye.
Hmm rather the other way round I would think old boy. Low down car, no roof - High horse, big hoofs, high up bum......
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Kind of the worst part about it was that I had the latest aqueeze in the car and had just dropped down a cog or two for the aural effect etc to accelerate up a dual carriageway hill and the sodding Cherry came bowling past...It hurt you know, hurt...
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The Western Isles used to have colonies of a Collie variant known as the Hebridean Car Chaser. Could give you a run for your money on a twisty single track.
Darwin's doing for most of them though.
EDIT - Come to think of it they were probably once widespread. The last survivors lurk towards Breanish on West Lewis
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sun 20 Nov 11 at 19:21
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MG Metro and left for dead by an Allegro-shaped lump of isopon in grey primer was my pain moment.
I think that under all the filler and primer was probably a 1750 Equipe[1] that had been lightly breathed on. Still felt very embarrassed though....
[1] The Austin Allegro Equipe. One of the few cars where rust, copious filler and primer is an improvement to the original appearance, of which "garish" is sadly inadequate as a description.
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They were hideous weren't they, a one time girl-friend's dad had a 1750 SS - with a five speed gearbox - cutting edge !
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My friend and I, with our respective girlfriends and luggage, were heading home from London in the mid-60s, in his Ford Anglia 100E.
On that long slope between Willerby Hedge and Mere on the A303 we were overtaken by a laughing girl in an Austin 7.
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Never been overtaken but had a couple of memorable moments with horses.
Many years ago I went to a skittles match in a pub a little way out in the sticks. They had very good, very cheap beer on offer (Butcombe at around £1 a pint I recall) and myself and a couple of others in the team made the most of this. Being a good old fashioned local, the landlord had an enlightened view on licencing hours, and it was the early hours when we realised we were outside and our driver for the night had left long before. By this time we didn't have enough money between us to use the phone box in the village much less pay for a taxi so a decision was made to walk the four or five miles home.
Walking up a very dark lane, all of a sudden we heard the most evil, rasping graveyard cough ever, right beside us, then silence. Then the same thing again. Sobriety set in fast, alcohol being replaced by adrenaline. At the third cough we weren't quite clinging together but were definitely edging towards each other. Edging away from the source of the cough we moved out from the hedgerow, just enough to see the horse silhouetted against the night sky. The rest of the walk home was a bit quicker and in a much straighter line.
A few years ago I was on my way to Southampton, going down the Wylie Valley towards Salisbury when a woman ran out of a gateway into the road in front of the car waving her arms. I stopped the car, looked around, and the woman had vanished. Not sure what to do I was about to pull the car onto the roadside and go and look for her when a horse burst through the hedge just in front of me then went galloping up the road in the direction I'd come from. The woman then ran out of the gateway again and headed off up the road after the horse with a continuous stream of profanities - aimed I hoped at the horse rather than myself. As it was one of those situations which was almost certain to end in disaster for all involved I was very relieved when a 4x4 went by a few seconds later, stopped for the woman, then shot off, presumably in pursuit of the horse.
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Embarassingly overtaken by horses - -
