The jovial gathering bubbles with anticipation as Clive Fowler, responsible for marshalling the guns, announces the first drive: The Bumps. A tangible ripple of anticipation reverberates among the merry band.
“The birds are challenging here. They spit out high from the apex of the ridge then hug the contours, descending rapidly. It’s a very testing first drive,” remarks host the Hon Charles Pearson, who rents Cocking Shoot in West Sussex from his brother, the 4th Viscount Cowdray.
As we debus, we cast our eyes skyward, tracking the line of the steeply rising woodland clinging precariously to the face of the escarpment. Swiss financier Urs Schwarzenbach takes a deep breath and asks, with a degree of trepidation: “Is my peg at the top?” Major David Waterhouse replies, “Yes. You’re going to need oxygen.”
Fortunately, for Schwarzenbach, he’s stationed at the foot of the looming woodland slope. The news is not so good for renowned art dealer Simon Dickinson, who has to clamber, grasping at clumps of grass, to his peg: a slit trench carved into the chalk hillside. This is not a drive for the faint hearted.
Guns safely positioned, Fowler gives the beating line the go ahead over the crackling airwaves and from the heavens, birds descend. Some stay high; others jink like slalom skiers, flicking wings as they drop rapidly and curl over on the guns. A former slalom skier and Cresta Run competitor himself, Schwarzenbach takes two in style in front while Anthony Burrell drops a towering cock bird that tumbles for an eternity before hitting terra firma and careering on down the precipitous slope.
Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin November 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin November 2020 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Rory Stewart - The former Cabinet minister and hit podcast host talks to Alec Marsh about the parlous state of British politics, land management and his deep love of the countryside
The gently spoken 51-year-old former Conservative Cabinet minister is a countryman at heart. That's clear: he even changes into a tweed waistcoat for the interview, which takes place at his London home and begins with a question about his precise career status. Having resigned from the Commons and the Conservative Party in 2019, the former diplomat and soldier has reinvented himself, first with an unconventional but promising run as an independent for the London mayoralty (abandoned because of COVID19 in 2020) and then as a media figure, co-hosting one of the country's most popular podcasts, The Rest Is Politics, alongside Alastair Campbell, the former Labour spin doctor.
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