To address recent stories doing the rounds in the media, the Osmington White Horse is not at risk and doesn’t need “saving”. The current state of the horse is a perennial issue which always rears its head this time of year when the ground is saturated, the chalk is dirty and light is poor. Adonis – all 85m of him – does appear to blend in with his surroundings and lose some shape and vibrancy but this is temporary.
We recognise the importance of this much loved horse to local people and visitors, so we have an annual maintenance plan which follows the same pattern each year. This includes our countryside rangers redefining the edges of the feature with oak boards, around February time, then we clear bigger clumps of vegetation by hand. When the ground has warmed up around May (and when the wind is calm), we spray the horse with a herbicide. This process is repeated in August.
Most of our rangers were redeployed in 2020 and 2021, delivering medicines and food parcels to vulnerable residents during the pandemic. Unfortunately this coincided with the usual maintenance and spraying cycle at the Osmington Horse site.
The work program will resume this year, and we have some non-weather dependent maintenance planned in the coming weeks. Rest assured Adonis will be back to looking his best very soon.
NB The irony is we *were* contacted and we provided an almost identical statement to the one above to local media. Unfortunately, that information appears to have gotten lost between the eye-catching headlines and colourful comments.
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