SIR — Re "Keep Horses Off The Road" (Your Letters November 27), how your anonymous writer can think that horses are taking over our roads belies history.

Before the advent of the motor car, horses were the main users of our roads! Until fairly recently, most of the beer for your pub was delivered by dray horses!

As for the "right to annoy motorists", you will see riders treating them with courtesy and thanking them for slowing down when passing their horse.

I suggest reference to the Highway Code sections 214 and 215 is quite clear about this issue.

I know from personal experience as, last year, my 18 year-old daughter could have been killed by a woman driving at her and her horse, hitting the horse a glancing blow at 30 mph.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of physics will find the comment on the weight of horses' hooves versus six/eight-wheeled lorries simply fatuous. Next time your correspondent walks along the pavement and sees cracked paving it's been done by wheels, not a pony!

Tax is an interesting one. We pay for our horse-boxes, horse passports and our taxes. As for horse droppings – put them on the roses!

This is a typical example of "cockerel syndrome" described so well in another letter last week.

Perhaps we should organise a petition for the Exmoor National Park rangers to train Exmoor ponies to keep off the tarmac or "stick them in a horsebox".

I am sure the many people who derive an income from horses and ponies on Exmoor would be only too pleased to support such a campaign.

Perhaps, in future, instead of breaking up the tarmac and holding up the traffic, Her Majesty should lead the Household Cavalry up The Mall in 4x4s pulling horse-boxes?

No wonder your correspondent doesn't wish to be identified!

Rollo Clifford,

Porlock Weir.