Not as exciting as my day ,went detecting and as i climbed fence no sign of resident horse ! The owners in his 70's its his grandaughters horse .Went over to gates and both gates were gone (most probably brexit) anyway i thought i would check with owner and he knows nothing about gates then it dawns the hoses gone!
Gates will have been pinched by pikies they seem to concentrate on an area taking any gates and man hole covers then disapear for a while ,the gates were pinched a few years ago and made safe but now disk cutters are battery powered nothing is safe!
Opposite field is a large wood ,luckily i saw hoof marks on the verge so i knew it had gone that way .i wandered round and before i knew it it was almost to dark to see so i phoned my son who brought torches .i went back up and met him then carried on searching
The wood has a bridal path in it and theres a track to the left and right right down by the river ,we chose the left and found nothing so at 1 am went up the other track that ended at a gate where an old lady keeps her horse ,the bugger was there looking over the gate at the other horse in its stable ,anyway we led the horse all the way back up the bridal path and parked it in the old guys garage ,got home at 2.30 . No tarriffs were involved, no frenchmen seen and only a small bit of diesel used
Update ,horse in field with wooden gate on so unless it leans on it it should remain there ,metal detector picked up and old bloke says (out of bedroom window)gates have already been found . turns out when these were made (the opening is wide enough for a horse transporter so has two gates end to end and a single one from the parking area into the field) he had the fabricator stamp the bottom with the post code in small type .He phoned the cops they checked round the usual suspects and there they were hes no waiting to have them repaired and returned .
I expect another couple of days they would have been in bits in a pile of scrap ,the cops disinterested and a crime number given as most things are today . Obviously the rural crime section is on its toes .The same thing happened when the gates to the house i worked in were pinched they were found in a few hours!