I have been staying with my best friend in Suffolk for a couple of days. I realised we were only 45 minutes from one of the Redwings sanctuaries, so we nipped up there yesterday morning to visit the horses.
Liz can't go near them - she is allergic to everything with fur - but I had a fantastic time meeting them and scratching anyone who wanted, particularly their resident Shires, Prince and Gemma.
It is free to get in to Redwings, and the place was full of people with children who couldn't believe their luck at getting so close to horses who wanted to talk to them and (my personal favourites) granddads who had waited 80 years for the chance to scratch a Shire horse on the girth.
All the horses live out with their friends in big paddocks, and their stories are up in panels on the fences. Some of them bring tears to your eyes. The horses at the sanctuaries are the ones who for one reason or another can't be rehomed with families to work, so their tales can be fairly harrowing. But they all seem happy now.
Other visitors found out within 2 minutes that I knew something about horses and fired questions at me until I was hoarse (ha ha). What a great place!
Here is me with Prince (18.2) and Gemma (17.3) and with Prince, giving it all I've got on the girth. He imitated a giraffe for most of the time, but when the picture was taken he was politely trying to groom me back. I had horse lip prints on my t shirt for the rest of the day.
Liz can't go near them - she is allergic to everything with fur - but I had a fantastic time meeting them and scratching anyone who wanted, particularly their resident Shires, Prince and Gemma.
It is free to get in to Redwings, and the place was full of people with children who couldn't believe their luck at getting so close to horses who wanted to talk to them and (my personal favourites) granddads who had waited 80 years for the chance to scratch a Shire horse on the girth.
All the horses live out with their friends in big paddocks, and their stories are up in panels on the fences. Some of them bring tears to your eyes. The horses at the sanctuaries are the ones who for one reason or another can't be rehomed with families to work, so their tales can be fairly harrowing. But they all seem happy now.
Other visitors found out within 2 minutes that I knew something about horses and fired questions at me until I was hoarse (ha ha). What a great place!
Here is me with Prince (18.2) and Gemma (17.3) and with Prince, giving it all I've got on the girth. He imitated a giraffe for most of the time, but when the picture was taken he was politely trying to groom me back. I had horse lip prints on my t shirt for the rest of the day.
