Hugh Thomson

I set out to walk the Coast to Coast with a mule. But fifirst I had to fifind a mule…

THE IDEA OF taking a mule across England had come about in the same way as so many of my projects: a longentertained half-thought crystallising into action without at any stage being examined for plausibility, possibility or sheer bloody stupidity.

As my wife pointed out, ‘you haven’t really thought how you’re going to do this, have you?’ This was rhetorical, as married conversations often are. We both knew I hadn’t. But then if you don’t occasionally jump out of planes, you never land. For some reason, I’ve often found this argument appeals more to the male than female mind. Women are equally adventurous, often more so; but they like to see where they are putting their feet. Or in this case, where they are putting their animal’s hooves.

I had started with the assumption that I would easily find a mule. Perhaps not quite as easily as I had always been able to do in Peru – where you can turn up in a village and book a mule like a taxi – but surely there were plenty around? No there weren’t. A few chance and choice encounters with horse dealers had put me right on that one.

Unlike Peru, the rest of South America, the USA, France, Spain, and much of Europe, there were, for complicated reasons, very few mules in England. Plenty of horses, many a donkey, but no mules.

Would I have to import one? Sure to be time-consuming, expensive and complicated. I had heard horror stories about the difficulty of bringing a mule over from Spain. Or buy an American riding mule at several thousand quid?

I did discover there was a British Mule Society. One thing about the UK is that it has a society for just about everything, even if, as in this case, it has an extremely small membership.

They told me about Jethro. ‘He’s perfect. Very sociable, likes humans. Small, with lovely colouring. And he’s at an RSPCA rescue centre so needs somebody to take him on.’ I was sold. But would the RSPCA be? The lady at the sanctuary was helpful when I rang. ‘Jethro has been with us for three years. He’s eight. He has been badly treated, so he has needed a lot of patience, and he could still need a lot of patience.’

This was a warning of sorts, which I chose to ignore. By this stage, I was ready to take any mule who was short of psychopathic.

‘Also we don’t ride any of our animals, so he’s been standing in a field for three years and hasn’t had much exercise. And like donkeys, mules can be prone to weight-gain issues.’ As soon as I met him, I could see Jethro had a bit of a spare tyre. If anything, this made me sympathetic. Moreover, Jethro had been gelded late in life, so retained the energies and inclinations, if not the abilities, of a stallion. He was small – 12 hands – with striking colouring, a freckling of white and beige like an Appaloosa, and an enquiring and appraising gaze which I came to learn was characteristic. I noticed his eyes: dark, soulful and thoughtful. Our first meeting in the RSPCA yard was cordial, if not effusive; so English in the best possible sense. They got out the forms for me to sign. I arranged to borrow Jethro for enough time to train him and do the journey, although I did not have the stabling facilities to keep him permanently. ‘ The thing about Jethro,’ said Alice, one of his carers, ‘is that he either likes you or he doesn’t’. This seemed straightforward; and Jethro had showed no sign of taking against me.‘ The other thing is… he’s very intelligent. He’ll only do something if he wants.’ Alice’s tone implied that this intelligence wasn’t always a helpful quality. We had 200 miles of Coast to Coast path ahead of us to find out.