From pit-ponies to polo ponies: hoofprints on the British landscape
Horses have schlepped, hauled and galloped grooves into Britain, providing the muscle for transport, industry, agriculture and leisure and the inspiration for myth, art and literature. In The Bridleway, the environmentalist Tiffany Francis-Baker maps this busy-storied topography from the Uffington White Horse to ancient roads, canals, coaching inns, race courses, conservation projects and public art. She crosses the country to speak to horse-people and explores old bridleways. Some of the landscapes she visits are subsiding, as she puts it, ‘into the healing bosom of the earth’. Others are threatened with erasure, and so, ‘to keep these spaces full of memory, all we must do is tread the same paths, either
