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.)
Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin February 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye The Field dergisinin February 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
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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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