Minorca to Manresa

I received an email from Tolo this morning confirming that Assuan had arrived safely in Manresa and that everything is ok.

Just have to wait until Sunday now for ETA to collect him.

On a personal note, just finished doing some work in Simon Cowell's office at Sony. It's almost as big as the downstairs at home!

The journey begins

I got an email last night from Tolo saying that all the papers are in order and that Assuan will be starting his journey this morning.

He's going to be in Manresa by tonight and will be staying there until Sunday when ETA collect him.

Hopefully Tolo will be notified when he arrives safely there and he will let me know.

Photos from Tolo

Received two emails from Tolo today, the first one worried me because there was a problem with the paperwork required to export Assuan. Later that day I spoke with Tolo who told me he'd spent 2 hours on the phone in the morning and has now sorted the problem with the papers and everything should be in order.

His second email was a few photos of Assuan and his mum. So here they are: 

 

Stables preperations

Spent the entire weekend, de-cobwebbing, cleaning, disinfecting and re-painting the stable that Assuan will have as his new home. I've actually really enjoyed doing it, working out in the fresh air but also under cover.

Pictures of the newly decorated stable and the yard coming shortly!

Shopping spree......

Jo had today off of work and the three of us (Jo, Chloe and I) spent the entire day driving from tack shop to pet shop, to DIY shops, checking prices and buying things we needed, feeds, head collars, wheel barrows, bins, brooms, grooming kit........

Chloe was interested to know why (as far as she was still concerned we weren't getting Assuan) so we told her that we were picking things up for other people at the yard.

We had our first trip to Robinsons in Basingstoke, my word, what a shop. Everything in the shop was screaming buy me, buy me  - or maybe that was just Chloe......

So, now we've got to store all this stuff and try and invent a good reason why we weren't taking all these things to the people at the yard. I'd better use next week to get the stable and tack rooms ready I guess.

Making the arrangements.

Today has been a total nightmare.

I tried to have a conversation with the transport company that we were hoping to use, they didn't return my call. There wasn't a great deal of time between now and when they said they would be in Barcelona to make the collection. My concerns were that the paperwork just wasn't going to be ready in-time and that it would be the right paperwork to start with!

As the original transporters didn't call me back, I decided to make further enquiries with alternative providers. I called Equine Travel Agency (ETA) to get a price from them. I had a brief conversation about the paperwork but I couldn't ascertain what the Export Certificate would be called in Menorca for me to be able to ensure that Tolo would have the correct paperwork ready.

So, I called Defra, no help there, they just confirmed what the documents were called in the UK. They suggested I called the Spanish embassy, so I called them -- they had no idea
I called the British embassy in Spain -- they had no idea
I called the Spanish version of Defra -- they couldn't speak English......
I eventually found a really helpful lady in Spain who I talked to for about 30 minutes, she explained a lot, but again only confirmed what I already knew and said that 'the people you are buying from should know what they need'   -- I wasn't sure (probably because of my awful Spanish trying to communicate with them, not fault of theirs)

I also received an email from Tolo saying that Assuan was going to start his journey in the next couple of days.....ahhhhh panic stations. I decided to call ETA back, I was passed onto Graham, who to cut a long story short, put up with my ramblings and 'stupid' questions, assured me that everything would be fine and said that he'd sort it all out for me. Phew...... He took Tolo's details and I left it with him.

On a side note: I can't recommend ETA more, if you need to transport a horse, use ETA. I won't be using anyone else in the future. Their website is: http://www.eta.uk.com more about ETA later!

So, it was now just a case of sitting back, relaxing and getting the stable ready.

Foal hunting!

We met with Samantha's dad in the morning who introduced us to Chisco. Chisco agreed to come to Santa Rita to have a look at Assuan and tell us what he though of him and also show us various other foals that were available. He would have to make some arrangements and it was decided that we should meet him at 3pm at the Vimpy in Ferreries.

At 3pm he met us again, jumped into our hire car and headed off to Santa Rita. He and Tolo had a chat (not sure what they were saying) but I think that maybe Tolo was worried that he would show us some better foals to buy, I could be wrong. They both went in a looked at Assuan, then we went back to the car to go to the next place. His comments about Assuan were 'he's nice, he has good feet' not quite sure what he meant by that myself.

The first place we arrived at was not too far down the road, no hang on, the entrance wasn't too far down the road, the farm was a 15 minutes drive down a dusty rocky road, massive stones kicking up under the car. The thought 'Maybe I should have paid the 25 Euro at the car hire company to protect the underneath of the car' oh dear!

We arrived at the self-contained little farm, it was beautiful. Fully self-contained, wind and solar generators for electricity, I don't think they had mains electric or waste, possibly had mains water being a farm. They had some cats and dogs and the sweetest little puppy, at one point it jumped one of the cats backs and was play fighting with it, the car was clearly used to it and ignored it. The owner lead us around the back of his farm to the paddock where the foals were roaming, we walked past a cow laying on the floor with four little hooves sticking out the back, clearly in labour.

His foals were lovely, older than Assuan and coming from some winning blood lines, but it has to be said, they just weren't Assuan and were clearly not as handled. Suddenly everyone burst into action, the owner run to a shed and pulled out a big metal t-bar, went across to the cow that was in labour who had now moved off of the floor. He put the t-bar onto it's behind, had a rope around the calves hooves which attached to the device and he started to winch the calf out of the mum. I've seen it on television before, but being just 3 metres away is quite and experience; Chloe was bemused. Chisco mucked in and helped grab the calf as it was born and lowered it to the floor, he was covered in blood; the farms wife gave him some fresh clothes to wear and took his off to be washed.

After this we headed off to some other farms to see some more foals. All very nice, but not handled and you can hardly get near them. We thanked Chisco for his time, asked how much we owed him for his time and he refused to take anything, his answer was 'I'm just helping out some of my friends'.

It has to be said, the sense of community in Menorca is amazing.

We went back to tell Tolo that we wanted to buy Assuan, but he was out on a ride, so we decided to go back to the apartment, get changed to go out for dinner and then go back to see him later. When we returned later in the evening, we sat down and had a long chat with him about everything. There was a distinct proud look on his face when we told him that after seeing all these foals, Assuan was the best. We made various arrangements and said that we would fine tune the details over email. Tolo said that he would like some pictures of him when he grows up, we said we be sending him pictures all the time. This also gave us a lot of confidence in Tolo; we were originally a bit nervous of purchasing a foal from someone that we couldn't communicate with 100% in case something got lost in translation.