Not something you encounter every day of the week. I was just driving down the road on my way to the shops and was approaching a field which has a couple of Shire horses, nothing unusual for me there except they were standing very close to each other and were near to the drop into the road. For some reason I slowed right down, a second sense I guess because both horses then clambered down into the road and if had not have been going so slow I would have hit one or both of them. They then set off down to the corner of the road, a road with a blind exit with a more major road. Off they went across the road, the cars coming in both directions had managed to stop and the horses then set off across a potato field which is covered in polythene.

I then drove to where I thought the owners lived, not apparently the owners but they promised to let the owner know straight away. When I drove back home I looked in the potato field and could see them down at the bottom of the field eating grass so nowhere near the road. Had they not crossed into that field they might well have gone to the prison or even to Corbiere, or heaven forbid, up onto the main road heading for town!

There is normally an electric wire I think which keeps them away from the drop into the road.

It must be the day for it, on our news today is an item about our fire brigade having to cut a horse free from a metal gate it had tried to scale or jump, and ended up getting caught.

Was it the same horse, Sue?

Horses on the loose scare the daylights out of me. When I was a kid, we were following another car when a horse ran onto the road. The poor driver had nowhere to go as the horse came right across the bonnet and smashed the windscreen. Fortunately for the people in the car, the horse did not go right through, and they survived unhurt. The animal had to be put down, though.

One of the things I love about Northamptonshire is that it has narrow country lanes that wind and twist between sloping fields and ancient hedgerows. Picture postcard England. It's very beautiful - and sometimes quite hairy as a monster tractor comes round the bend loaded with bales or a flock of sheep gets moved from field to field without hazard warning lights. On a moonlit night it can seem magical and I never mind driving home (apart from wintertime when the magical black ice shoves cars into hedges without so much as a by your leave) so one mild evening after dinner with some friends I got into the car and looked forward to the drive.

They live about ten miles from here and my route home goes past the back of the Althorp estate. When Princess Diana used to visit, that lane sometimes sprouted armed policemen, when there are major concerts there it sprouts all sorts of weird vehicles, and when I drove down it after dinner that night it sprouted white horses.

Eh? I can hear you wondering about my boozy evening but I assure you I rarely drink alcohol and that evening was no exception; there as I came round a bend in the road was a white horse. Well, I suppose that it was really a grey but in the moonlight it looked completely white to me, and loose. A loose horse trotting down the road towards... oops, a few miles on lay the A5, a major trunk road. I got out of the car and waved my arms at it. Oh come on, how many of you townies know what to do with a loose horse? I had no idea. Horses are huge, they snort, and I rode one once. Note the word 'once'. Anyway, I waved, it looked, and then it nonchalantly turned round and ambled off in the opposite direction as though it had always meant to do that. I followed it, in the car. There's nothing on that road until the village next to mine except... oh wait, there was another horse. Two white horses, whoa! I said that to myself, not them. Then I said it to them. And then in the valley I saw a house. A farmhouse. Of course these days a lot of farmhouses have townies living in them but I decided to try my luck and drove down the lane. And then wondered what they'd do when a strange woman knocked on the door at two in the morning saying "Excuse me, have you lost your horse? Or your other horse?"

It wasn't their horse, or their other horse, but they knew whose horses they were, so they got up, and I drove off still seeing white horses. I tell you, when I got home I had a stiff drink!

It wasn't the same one unless it had travelled quite a number of miles. There are a number of Shire horses in fields around here, I must say that I hadn't noticed the white one before.

One of my nieces was in a terrible car accident with some of her friends. They hit a horse late one night coming home. She'd just bent down to pick something up from the floor and that saved her. The entire top was taken off the car and the others, and the poor old horse, were all killed

Oh my gosh, Creedy, that's truly awful.

Nothing brings your heart into your mouth like suddenly coming across a big animal in the road - as Creedy has pointed out, it's not just the animal that is in terrible danger. Around here it is usually deer or moose - you'll probably survive an encounter with a deer, but not with a moose.

I have met my moose and lived to tell the tale, as did the moose! He came at the car out of nowhere, struck the front right bumper, rolled against the windshield, up over the roof of the car, thumped down on the trunk, back onto the road, got up and trotted into the woods on the other side of the road, leaving gouts of blood and fur on the car, and three rather dazed individuals. I was driving and remember just thinking, "I'm dead" while slamming on the brakes. The windshield shattered on me and the chap in the passenger seat; another chum in the back seat slept through it all! The car was a write-off, but apart from having glass shards all over us, nothing worse. If, however, the legs had come through the windshield, I would not be here to tell the tale, and nor would Mr. Moose, who, I assume, is still wandering happily through the woods and bogs of The Rock! They are such goofy, yet unintentionally dangerous beasts - and BIG!