Synopsis
Gay Pyper has spent all her life with horses and enjoys living adventurously. No-one could say she shirks a challenge. When she was young her jobs were all horse-related: working for Riding for the Disabled, then with hunters, point-to-pointers, show animals and racehorses. Next she travelled to Australia as a GBP10 immigrant where she tried her hand at other things, too. Her jack-of-all-trades duties at a television station in the Outback included reading the news, putting programmes on air - and dealing with the TV rentals! So when she and her husband James decided to move permanently from Cornwall to their smallholding in South West France, she declared her intention of driving there by pony and trap. Her announcement was met by a stunned silence followed by questions. "Will you know where you are and how will Dad find you?" asked the children. "Can you ask for directions and will you understand the replies?" asked friends. James calmly pointed out the obvious: "We don't have a pony," he said. Their driving pony had died of old age a few years before - but they still had the custom-built trap. This delightful book traces how Polly the 12.2hh skewbald pony came into, and took over, the Pypers' lives - entering happily into the meticulously-oranised adventure of travelling hundreds of miles through rural France from Normandy to Gascony. Their plan was for Gay to drive the trap (and lead Polly up the hills on foot) while James went ahead each day with a 4x4 vehicle and caravan to set up camp for the evenings and longer rest stops. They did lots of research and reconnoitred the route several months in advance. But first Gay and James had to buy a suitable second-hand caravan, and persuade Defra that they were not exporting Polly in order to eat her. Then they had to deal with all the things that Fate decided to throw at them to make the adventure more nailbiting. In fact, disaster struck even before they started, putting the whole venture in jeopardy. As was to happen many times, the kindness of strangers saved them...
