Saddlechariot/Bannedwaggon/Revolutionary Pony Access

Please go to http://ponyaccess.com/ , my new website covering the saddlechariot/iBex and it’s uses. This is where you will also find links to all my articles on training, safety, vehicle design and even the weird stuff on cooking and politics.

My new contact details are ponyaccess@gmail.com

and my phone number is +44 7510 736 518

Look at the black bar just above this and you will see the word Saddlechariot, which if you press it, reveals a site which tells you about the Saddlechariot, pressing Bannedwaggon tells you about the Bannedwaggon. If you can’t guess what Revolutionary Pony Access tells you about, I suggest you get an education. It never did me any harm etc.

“Thinking outside the Horsebox” is an attempt to tie everything together round the story of two journeys with Obama across England and Wlaes

These pages describe ten years enthusiasm for Ponies, for People enjoying Ponies, but most importantly, for Safety. As a long term coward, safety is the first priority in my vehicles, and is just as important in my advice on training people or ponies.

The British Horse Establishment are indifferent to safety. Ponies, horses, children and adults are injured, maimed and killed by a system that avoids the first principles of Health and Safety.

Ten years of begging the Equestrian Establishment to look at a safe system have taught me not to waste my breath. Instead, this site under Safety, will publish me reporting myself to the Health and Safety Executive. My crimes: (1) Deliberately designing and recommending vehicles that contravene the best practices recommended by the Equestrian Establishment. (2) Recommending that people should IGNORE the safety advice of the Equestrian Establishment.

As a complete surprise, pressing Safety on the top bar will connect you with the subject.

The rest of the Blog is what I did today, what interests or amuses me. Maybe about ponies, maybe about producing gas from waste vegetables in Nigeria, certainly not about “popular culture”.

I am on Facebook, my email is   ponyaccess@gmail.com , my phone is 07510 736518
Simon Mulholland

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saddlechariot/bannedwaggon by Simon Mulholland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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UN International Day for Persons with Disabilities Dec 3rd

To celebrate the UN’s International Day for Persons with Disabilities,   Devon Contract Waste are sponsoring Pony Access to make Burgh Island wheelchair accessible for the day.

Obama, the pony, will be pulling the iBex Saddlechariot, wheelchair enabled, safe, all terrain vehicle, providing wheelchair access to an area that was previously inaccessible.

John Seamons of Scoot Along, and friends, will be demonstrating wheelchair beach access, and showing that only the British think December a perfect time to go to the beach.

 

Come along to watch, and if we can,or have a go.

Devon Contract Waste are also sponsoring Pony Access to demonstrate beach access at Exmouth. Times and dates to be arranged. If you are interested contact Simon Mulholland, Pony Access, 07510 736518

Retraining Obama 1

Retraining a pony isn’t easy. For a start how far back do you go. When you know the animal as well as I know Obama going back is nearly impossible. It’s not so bad with the Bannedwaggon, which is pretty new to both of us, and i can settle down and look at Obama’s responses.
The first time I took him out in it, (after the Exeter to London trip) there was serious tension. But I had left off one part which stops it flipping up when empty, and Obama was unimpressed when it showed signs of flipping. And yes, all you BDS types out there, things do go wrong when I am driving the Bannedwaggon prototype. This is known as product testing. Obama and I do the stupid things, so you and your animal don’t have to.
By the second day, he was settling down a bit, third day he was eating the verge while in the Bannedwaggon, and the fourth day, he was bored again. But I am still scared, and the current Bannedwaggon has been anglegrinded (angleground) rather viciously and has strange, and lethally sharp bits of metal sticking out in odd places, so it is difficult to assess which of Obama’s problems are caused by the last few minutes of the London trip, and which are caused by my obvious fear.
So today I went for a blat in the Mark 10 Saddlechariot. Obama drives sweet as a nut until we get to the hill leading to Shillingford and digs his toes in. He will go up very slowly if I lead him, and slower still if I try to drive him. If I climb on the Saddlechariot he goes into park mode. He seems slightly scared, and there is a very distinct smell, a rather weird smell of horse all around, which I can’t explain, but equally can’t prove wasn’t Obama farting consistently.
After taking 20 minutes for a five minute hill we got to the bridleway at the top which we took at a reasonable speed and then he decided we were back moving again. I still don’t know if he just objected to the gradient, which isn’t dramatic, he has done a lot steeper, or whether the smell worried him.

But the best bit was going back down the hill to Ide. After cresting the ridge, while we hadstopped to chat to a couple of dogwalkers, three riders came up the hill towards us. I pulled over as you do, and then had a fascinating few minutes watching as all three tried to ride past Obama and I.
Thrashing away with their whips, kicking like mad and jerking their horses heads around with the bit, they were getting nowhere fast. I rather unsportingly asked them to keep the whip use down if they managed to get anywhere near us, since Obama is terrified of whips. One tried getting off and flailing away with a whip and jerking the horse’s head round with the same lack of success  she had had, while sitting on top. They then admitted defeat, and rode back down the hill and through Ide to go up the hill that Obama and I had come up.
Obama, who I consider needs retraining from scratch, stood like a rock through this performance, on a loose rein, occasionally nuzzling me to see if everything was all right. When they turned back, Obama was raring to go and play with them, but I thought they would never keep their animals under control, so we drove maintaining a 100 yard gap the whole way. No bit, no whip, no blinkers, no violence, no problem. The BHS types couldn’t cope with the simplest problem, and I am the one who thinks he has to retrain his animal.

Smug bastard aren’t I?

Hello world!

I like doing  things the wrong way round, the Bannedwaggon was built as a wheelchair enabled vehicle and I’ve finally got round to modifying it slightly, to make it easier for those without wheelchairs to use. But despite my tendency to do things backwards, or from the wrong angle, I still can’t get my head around blogs.

I have had a lot of fun on Blogger, but I like the next thing to follow on from the last, not to be in front of it. So WordPress which will, it appears, let me write a website on a Blog, and still have a blog on the side, should do everything I want. If I want this to join my deathless prose, I can cut and paste and slap it into my pages, and if I decide its just meaningless waffle, it can act as historical record to my meaningless waffling.

I can link to Thomas Culhane who is really impressive and to a really frightening article and can then just ignore them or I can suggest that reading Outsider might be worth a try which is one of the pages I have just added.