The pluck of the Irish

Horse power is key if you decide to face Ireland’s dastardly drains, fearsome banks and stone walls. And, perhaps, a desire to join the tumblers club…

- OCTAVIA POLLOCK

If you want to settle your nerves before hunting in Ireland, avoid YouTube. There are films galore of dishevelled riders and shaggy horses scrambling up mountains of mud and plunging into fastflowing, murky water, the latter sometimes ending with horses and riders, no longer in company, being swept downstream.

In truth, the reality is not far different. I remember slithering down a veritable cliff, my feet sliding straight out of the treadless stirrups. Another time, landing over a drain, my boots were on the ground yet I was still in the saddle, so deep had my horse sunk in the mud. I once realised, in mid air, that my clever little mare was clearing a ditch I hadn’t seen and on one memorable occasion, riding a brilliant grey belonging to legendary trainer Aidan O’Connell, found myself jumping four stone walls with no reins after they broke over a drop.

What you will gather from this is that horse power is key. If you’ve got a proper Irish horse under you, with a brain and a fifth leg, you will feel the exaltation that comes with tackling the scariest obstacles in the Emerald Isle and surviving. The Irish hunter, justly celebrated all over the world, was developed for endurance in sport and war. “It is very clever,” says O’Connell, who has trained and sold horses for decades. “English breeders understood that; their genius was putting in an ingredient called stamina. How did Napoleon do what he did? Irish horse! Marengo was bred in Wexford. And Wellington’s horse Copenhagen came from Cork.” (Reputedly, at least.)