Stress relief

A day out with the beagles is the best way to escape the intense pressures of student and city life

- GEORGE BOWYER

Trinity Foot & South Herts Beagles, Cainhoe Manor, Beds

IF you are going to go for a day's hunting in South Bedfordshire, where better to start it than under the bedroom window of the hunting lodge where Henry VIII used to stay when he hunted in the area? With clear blue skies on a fresh spring morning and an eager pack of beagles in front of me, we can gloss over the fact that the word "allegedly" should probably feature in that sentence.

Senior joint-master Matthew Higgs, who has been master since 1988, had brought 12 couple of beagles to the meet at Cainhoe Manor, a splendid 16th-century, timbered manor house, sitting on top of a small hill outside Gravenhurst. Our host, Tim Burton, follows the pack most weekends and Cainhoe is a regular meet.

It was gratifying to see a large gathering of around 40 foot-followers at the meet, which was split around halfand-half between students from the University of Cambridge, the traditional home of the Trinity Foot, and residents of the old South Herts Beagles country, with a few visitors from elsewhere thrown in. The two hunts amalgamated in 2002, necessitated largely by urban sprawl reducing the available hunting areas of both, and the new pack has gone from strength to strength.

As we left the meet, crossing over the road to the southwest heading for the first piece of woodland, I found myself walking at the back with Karina Krief, who was out for her very first day. Originally from Israel, she had come to see what the strange new hobby her sister had taken up was all about, so I told her I would ask her what she thought at the end of the day.