Long hunts and lots of fun
catherine.austen@futurenet.com
LOOKING back over some of the best days and periods of foxhunting that I have enjoyed, I was glad that I had always kept a scrapbook as well as a hunting diary. While delving into some of these earlier books, most of them damp with mildew and photographs loosened with age, it is easy to spot the red-letter days by the “headlines”.
In those days, Horse & Hound picked out the star reports sent in by hunts, giving them headings such as: “West Percy raid College Valley Country with 8-mile point”, “South Dorset make up for fog delay with 7-mile point” or, more intriguingly, “Leading ladies floored during South Dorset run!” There was much rivalry between scribes in those days to catch the editor’s eye.
It is also interesting to compare the foxhunting countries in which I was lucky enough to have hunted hounds. If long hunts were the criteria for the best days,
