Welsh Journals

two-in-hand as a matching pair, for which he has become so well known. Mr Dick Beynon, Vice-President and Mr Roy Grey, Treasurer, of the Llanrhidian Marsh Pony Improvement Society, both keep ponies on the Marshes or Loughor Estuary which, they say, has a tide run of eleven miles, the second longest in the world. The marsh has natural divisions, troughs of water which remain there whether the tide is in or out. In this way five herds can be kept there separated from each other on an area of 3,000 or so acres. It is interesting to note that the ponies do not walk in and out with the tide but simply choose a place they know will be high enough and stand there with their heads above the water until it recedes. At the highest tides of the year they somehow know they must move to higher ground and before there is any visual sign of the incoming tide they lift their heads as though listening and then make their move. The owners of these herds have formed themselves into a society which buys in stallions and rotates them between the different herds every two years. Unlike Mr John Marson, they put their stallions out on the marsh with the mares in May and bring them in in October. Each farmer takes his turn of looking after the stallions on his farm during the winter. Amazingly, they all, without the presence of any mares, live amicably in the same field until February, when it is time to bring them in and prepare them for the great stallion show which is held at Builth Wells each year. The Society must have an 'eye' for perfection since they owned the stallion that won the Supreme Champion in 1978 and again for two years running in 1993 and 1994. Their Association to improve the breed was started before the First World War, but during the Second World War, when most of the population went into the Forces, the ponies were left truly 'in the wild'. After the war people returned to find that in-breeding had caused the ponies to become a poor shape with 'heads like buckets', only fit for taking to the market. Now the Llanrhidian Marsh Pony Improvement Associa- tion (restarted in 1954) is proud of its stock, which is in demand all over the world. Gower ponies have learned to live alongside today's society, often helping themselves to the vegetables or bread from dustbins put out for collection on 'bin day' or looking for the water a kindly householder will leave outside in wheelbarrow or bucket. However, many of the general public seem not to realise that inbred instincts from generations past still live on in these ponies and they will kick out if someone walks between mare and new-born foal, or stallion and in-season mare. People will insist on feeding the ponies, and the ponies are learning that people mean food. However, when a hand becomes empty, or no food is offered, the frustrated pony will sometimes bite or kick. Many times accidents happen