Homesearching for 2×2 legs and 1×4 legs

We spent all day yesterday covering mileage in Oxfordshire.

Not good, because my programme was a little too ambitious.

We viewed three houses and four livery yards.

The houses are easy to categorise in order of viewing:
1. Yes!
2. No!!!
3. No (but no exclamation marks). A nice enough house but it was three doors down from a small block of chav-filled bedsits which makes me sound like a terrible snob (I’m not), but the sight of an early-20s girl wandering out of her home in her dressing gown in the late afternoon to sit on the steps with multiple track-suited boys was enough ‘No’ material by itself.

The livery yards were more complicated because the first and third were not quite as straightforward as they could have been:
1. A strong Maybe. They don’t do part livery, just DIY, but the horses in the turnouts looked chilled, relaxed and well. The stables were moderately sized, good security, well-ordered feed- and tack-rooms. The yard also has miles of off-road riding a couple of good-sized floodlit (outdoor) all-weather arenas and a cross-country course.

2. No. Not if hell froze over tomorrow. No. No. No. No. No!!!

3. A strong Maybe. The horses we saw looked reasonably chilled but there was an Arab in a turnout of three that cocked a very interested ‘going to run, going to hide, going to do nothing at all but stand and watch’ head at us from 50m away (my money was on ‘going to run’). The stables are a little smaller than I’m used to – about 12×14, but like yard 1 it’s very well maintained, neat and tidy. This place has a beautiful, very large (but not floodlit) all weather arena but it has an indoor rubber arena that is just too fantastic for words. On the downside it is right next door to RAF Brize Norton and although the person who showed us round said her horses didn’t mind low-flying jet aircraft, her horses are warmbloods and Vin is a hyped-up Thoroughbred. There’s also a questionmark about turnout being possibly restricted for what may be undefined periods during the worst of the winter.

4. Yes. Full or part livery available. The horses were being brought in when we were there and they looked completely relaxed – some had obviously been in for a while and they too looked chilled. The yard has larger stables (14×16), is immaculately managed, looks neat, tidy and thoroughly professional from the outset. Unlike yard 3 this one is run by the owner who has full-time and part-time staff on site (yard 3 labour would be provided by the woman who rents the yard from the land owner). There’s an outdoor all-weather arena, all-weather lunging pen, join-up pen, mirrored indoor arena, all-weather gel-trak gallops and a BE cross-country course. The only down-side is this is the most expensive but they have everything on site and, importantly, there’s lots of redundancy built in to the equine care labour requirements.

Negotiations on the house begin tomorrow morning.

B.