The Adventures of Southern Gothic Zirondelle - Summer Holiday

The next time Zirondelle left the house was for our 2016 summer holiday in August. We usually go down the east coast and up the west coast, but this year we went down the west coast first, in order to catch a vintage vehicle show in Leyland.

Best Western Premier, Leyland

The Fjord Horde

A year ago, right after Lake District Live 2017, I sent Miss Laura the first order for the Fjord Horde. A year later at Lake District 2018 I picked up the last of the horde and unveiled them in the Conga class as the Fjord Rainbow.

Fjord horses are almost exclusively dun with a base colour of chestnut, bay, or black. The cream gene is also present which, when combined with dun, presents as lighter version of the standard colours - buckskin dun, palomino dun, and smoky black dun (which is visually indistinguishable from black dun).

A double dose of the cream gene + dun results in an almost completely white, blue-eyed horse - perlino dun (bay base), cremello dun (chestnut base), and smoky cream dun (black base). This colour is considered unfavourable and is very rare in the Fjord population.

The five "official" and registrable colours in the Fjord breed are called: Brunblakk (bay dun), Grå (black dun), Rødblakk (chestnut dun), Ulsblakk (buckskin dun), Gulblakk (palomino dun). Double dilutes, or Kvits, are not encouraged or recognized. The vast majority of modern Fjords are bay dun, with a scattering of chestnut and black duns and cream duns as a rarity, but in the past, the other colours were more popular and therefore more prevalent.

The Adventures of Southern Gothic Zirondelle - Bus Trip

In 2016 I needed to travel from Kirriemuir to Crieff to retrieve my jeep, Spot, from the dealership where he had been undergoing some rather extensive surgery. It's not what I would consider a particularly long journey, but it's a fairly tedious one from Kirrie as it involves changing buses in three towns. To while away the time with something other than the usual book, I brought Zirondelle along to attempt my first travel story.

We're just about to leave Kirrie and head to Alyth (a favourite location for fish n chips)