A day to remember

Bull Run, Cedar Mountain, Virginia, USA

VIRGINIA feels like the place where good foxhunters go when they die. It is a landscape of expansive wind-bleached fields, rolling up to brown wooded hills, with the calm bulk of the Blue Ridge mountains along the western horizon. Every fenceline seems to have an inviting hunt jump (a chicken coop, in the local parlance) built into it.

The pretty town of Middleburg could be considered the epicentre of Virginia hunting, surrounded as it is by fashionable packs like the Orange County, the Piedmont and the Middleburg Hunt.

The depth of wealth here is almost inconceivable. Many farms are bought as tax write-offs, or for the status that land ownership in the Piedmont confers upon the owner. The famous Orange County Hunt, arguably America’s most prestigious pack, requires that members own at least 50 acres of property which can be fairly hunted;