Margaret Leigh

My Kingdom for a Horse: the Story of a Journey on Horseback from the Cornish Moors to the Scottish Border (Equestrian Travel Classics) Margaret Leigh

In the autumn of 1939 a young English woman faced a difficult choice. Margaret Leigh had just sold her farm in Cornwall and wanted to return to her ancestral home in the Highlands of Scotland. Yet how to get there? The obvious choice would have included either a train or automobile. However Leigh had a strong streak of adventure running through her. She opted for that altar of travel, the saddle, dismissing those nay-sayers who said the deed couldn?t be done in such a modern age. What followed can only be described as one of the most delightful equestrian journeys of the early twentieth century, neither too hot, nor too cold, not too long, nor too short. It was in fact, just right! Though England was rushing headlong into the disaster of the Second World War, Leigh and her mare Ladybird, passed through the countryside unscathed, observing the twilight of a rural lifestyle that had lasted for centuries. ?My Kingdom for a Horse? is thus poetic and practical, alternately full of first-hand advice for travelers and keen observations of a rural England that no longer exists.