Okehampton, Alfred Meakin & Dartmoor foal rescue

Well we had another little adventure today... we drove to Okehampton to pick up a bathroom suite offered on Freecycle for the house we're planning to build in France (more about that in a future post!!)

We stopped off for a walk at Meldon Reservoir, which is stunningly beautiful - we'd been there before when we lived just outside Okehampton a few years ago.

View from the top of the reservoir to the original valley - knee-wobblingly high!

And as we were were walking along we came across an initially touching scene:

Dartmoor wild horse and foal

..but the longer we watched, the more obvious it became that the days-old foal was desperately trying to suckle from his mother and she wasn't moving an inch from where she lay, either ill or exhausted from the birth.

He danced around her on his skinny legs, trying to get her attention, but she barely looked at him:

It was heart-breaking, but my initial feeling was to just walk away; after all they're wild, and death (if she were seriously ill) is as much a part of nature as their freedom. Then neither of us could really bear to just leave them, so I walked back with the girls and Jude stayed behind and managed to encourage the mother to stand and left her feeding, the foal suckling. Both were shaky, but at least looking a bit happier. Jude said the foal was so unafraid he could have just led him away - indeed, I'd half expected him to come round the corner with him in his arms!

The girls had a great time despite the drizzle, until Jess tripped in the mud and Lucky trampled her by accident... daft dog was expecting Jude to throw a stone for him and didn't see Jess on the ground behind him!

Then we had a pootle round Okehampton where I saw these wonderful mosaics in the entrance of the museum (you can see one just behind the gate in the pic below)

and I bought this fantastic set of Alfred Meakin plates & serving dishes for a tenner!

My dish-rack has never been so co-ordinated!

(Jude got a tile cutter thrown in for free!)

And Milly was mesmerised by this fish in the arcade

And the knitting continues apace... more on that soon!

:-)