Walking the Wessex Ridgeway for the bloodhounds

In a previous column (Sporting Life, 1 July) I mentioned that I had somehow been cajoled into becoming chairman of the fundraising team for our local bloodhound pack. Since then we’ve held a hound-racing evening and various other events that have helped swell the hunt bank account.

But by far the biggest fundraiser so far this year was when, over the course of four days last month, several members of the “quarry” team – who normally run to provide the scent on a hunting day – walked the full length of the Wessex Ridgeway, sponsored by hunt supporters.

In 2024 the quarries undertook a similar challenge, but on that occasion they chose to walk the South Downs Way – the reason being that until recently the hunt was known as the South Downs Bloodhounds because the hunt’s territory originally encompassed much of the South Downs area.

A renamed pack and a 220km challenge

Progressively, however, the hunt has extended its range – and moved its kennel location – and in the future is just as likely to have meets in Wiltshire and Dorset as in Hampshire. As a result, the pack has been renamed and is now known as the Wessex Bloodhounds. It therefore seemed appropriate that the latest quarry challenge should concentrate on the Wessex Ridgeway and tackle its 220km route.

To do so, two teams each started at opposite ends on the Thursday and eventually met somewhere in the middle at Maiden Newton – the confluence of the rivers Frome and Hooke – on the Sunday. After incredibly hot weather over all the four days, liquid of some kind was obviously paramount but, for some inexplicable reason, what was on offer at the nearby Chalk and Cheese pub was an infinitely more attractive proposition than the river water.

Melinda and I linked up with one of the teams on the Saturday. Compared with the hard core, we walked only a small part of the total distance – and the main incentive for doing any of that section at all was the fact that a farmer, well-disposed towards the hunt, had offered us lunch en route. Nevertheless it did – or so I told myself – help stretch my legs and prepare me, fitness-wise, for the upcoming season’s beating days.

Counting down to the first partridge shoot

The local shoot – it is almost literally on our doorstep – has its first partridge shoot this coming Friday and from then I will be out beating there every Wednesday and Friday until mid-October, when the shooting dates change to weekly and pheasants become more prevalent in the game larder for the remainder of the season.

In common with many shoots these days, as well as a beaters’ wage packet and a bit of lunch there will be the opportunity to take a few birds home – which is just as well as we had the final brace of pheasants from the freezer back in early July. But even without that incentive it will certainly be good to meet up with the beaters and pickers-up again.

A few were at the summer clay shoot and barbecue back in June but I will not have seen the majority since the beaters’ day at the end of last season. There is no doubt that there will be much conversation and a certain amount of leg pulling.

They are a lovely, friendly bunch; perhaps the best and most welcoming team it has ever been my pleasure to join. And that, of course, is as much a part of a shooting day as pulling the trigger and bringing down a particularly high pheasant.

Jeremy Hobson was a gamekeeper for over 30 years. He regularly hunts and occasionally fishes, and is the author of over 30 fieldsports and country-based books.