A Meet so generous it's a wonder we didn't all have a nap!

The C-H family just kept bringing out more and more delicious bites - sausages, sausage rolls, roast potatoes, fish dippers . . . . the delicious bites just kept coming - a huge THANK YOU to our hosts for such a welcome and such generosity.

Thanks, as ever to our landowners and farmers for allowing us to lay trails across their land, letting hounds try to find and follow them and for welcoming the followers, mounted and wheeled.

Having torn themselves away from the veritable feast (thank you again C-Hs) a good sized mounted Wednesday field set off on a mildish day to watch hounds work.

An especial note for Sally who looked elegance itself riding sidesaddle.

And a historical note because your correspondent is interested in such things: there was a Gentleman's Sidesaddle Association that had its heyday just after the Great War. The reason was simply that hunting men, returning from the war having suffered leg amputations, found that the sidesaddle gave them the ability to follow hounds over the most cut-me-down country when their disabilities would have made that impossible riding astride.

It is inconceivable that even these gallant souls could have looked as elegant as our own Sally.

The Stern

• Who, in an attempt to embrace all that is modern coined the term "The Dog Operative" for the Huntsman?
• Who claims that the more skew-whiff the hat the better the day?
• Who announced to their dog, "time for a walk" and then, rather than actually walking, used the extendable lead to "cast" the dog?
• Who was heard to say that hounds were "giving lip"? (Personally, your correspondent was not aware of any impertinence by hounds).

Photographs

As ever these may be enlarged with a click and many more may be found at 

       The Gather's site click HERE

and on this occasion

       Combat Moose's site: click HERE