Lewknor 30th October 2010

With the sun burning off the autumn mists and the trees wearing their best coats, a meet of the Beagle Club Working Section was held at Field Farm, Lewknor on 30th October 2010 with the kind permission of Murray Graham.   There was an amazing turnout of 34 hounds and their owners who were split into two groups to follow the aniseed trail laid by Dan Cairns on his quad bike.  For the first line all the beagles were let off in one large group, watching the whole pack stream round was a wonderful sight.  When that number of individually owned hounds is doing what they were bred to do and looking like a pack it is a great thing.  There was a slight pause in proceedings for the second line of the day when Dan had to try and find the end of the drag which had come adrift. After an unsuccessful search he made the ultimate sacrifice and gave up one of his socks as a replacement drag.  That will be a pair of socks that the Working Section owes him now.  As we moved further up the field it was easy to see that some of our newcomers were getting the idea.  Ralph and Sniffs Millins were a good example, although if they lost the scent they would entertain each other before returning to their owner.  Henry Cooke, who started dragging with us last season, has settled in and is showing us that he is working out what it is all about.  Mind you there was a delay when he found something very special to roll in.  We moved out of the young rape field and onto some grassland at the base of the escarpment.  The line had a large loop in it and the first group got distracted and ended up finding the heel line and when they were nearly back to the start the majority of them dived through a hedge but soon returned to their owners.  The second line on the pasture was a greater success with Merlin Johnston, in his first season, showing the group where the line was.  Tosca Pottage who is one of our novice beagles, was also on good form.  We moved back onto the rape field and as the rest of the group came in there was a beagle with a fast wagging tail that had clearly found something more interesting; this was soon identified as another of our promising novice hounds, Bussell Brown.  She returned with the others on the next line which was the last line of the day.  With the sun still warming us all many of us retired to the garden at the Old Leathern Bottle to have lunch.