What an introduction in English country life: men in tweed jackets, long woollen socks and flat caps carrying rather large shot guns. ‘Twas all quite civilised really. Cup of coffee and a bacon sarnie to start the day, then pile into the back of an old converted army truck (hay bales for seats) to be ferried to the first drive. Walk along some bushes, beat them with sticks and make some noise and, hopefully, out fly the pheasants into the waiting line-of-sight of the ‘guns’, strategically placed along the fields. Dogs follow to fetch any pheasants that’ve gotten in the way of the ammunition fired and then off we go again to repeat the process at the next drive. Throw in the mid-morning stop for a shot or two of sloe gin or vodka, a midday break for soup and rolls, loads of friendly chit-chat and banter, a tonne of mud on the wellies then round it off with a steak pie & chips, apple pie and of course a pint at the pub and your day at an average English country shoot is done!
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| Julian all dressed up and ready to 'beat the bushes'. Hard to see in this pic but there are a couple of specs in the field behind-they're the 'guns' in position. |
Saturday: Hound hunt
Clean, fresh smelling, perfectly groomed, not a hair out of place-that was just the horses! Their riders even more impeccably presented. We had the privilege to be present at a meet for a hound hunt . We arrived at the property at 10:30am and were promptly offered the choice of port or whisky by the accommodating hosts who just happened to be relatives. We considered the early hour of the day, took one look around and accepted as that’s what everyone was drinking-more than likely to warm themselves up as it was another chilly English morning. After a spot of mingling with long lost cousins and other distant relatives the riders were summoned to the field with hounds dodging between horses legs detecting a scent. Next thing you know a horn sounded, hounds came bounding out again with horses in tow. The hunt had begun!
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| Release the hounds! |
Saturday evening: Village church carols
We got into the community spirit of things by attending a fundraising event at the local church-Christmas carols sung by a male quartet. Four men in tuxedos singing a mix of traditional and modern carols to an audience of an average age of 60+ interspersed with terrible dad jokes, you know that ones that are so bad you just have to laugh? We’re not too sure how the jokes about a parrot from a brothel or frilly nickers at the gates of heaven went down with the aged crowd or the church vicar though!
Not being much cultured in the art of the male singing voice, we had to giggle when the older, greying member of the quartet had a high feminine voice and the youngest 20 something singer with only whisps of hair for a beard had the deepest voice-completely unexpected before they opened their mouths!
Sunday: Family Christmas lunch
Presents under the tree, kids running around, cousins catching up with cousins, friendly banter about the cricket and rugby-sounds like you’re average family Christmas except the wood fire was roaring & the temperature was lucky to be 5 degrees! It was a really lovely way to end the weekend in the country and even better that there were presents for us under the tree! We could have rolled ourselves back to London after the feast that was the family Christmas lunch-smoked salmon sandwiches, roast gammon with all the trimmings, choice of crumble or pudding with fruit, ice-cream , custard & cream, cheese board with the smelliest but loveliest cheese all accompanied by suitable wines and liqueurs-so spoilt were we by Aunty Margaret’s fabulous cooking!
Check out the photos of weekend by clicking here
