Hunting mileage

I added up the mileage the hunters have covered so far this season and to my amazement they have already clocked up over 1600 miles between them!  I was surprised because we have lost 6 weeks to bad weather already - which is pretty tough as we still have lots of the winter still ahead of us - and so the horses have not been out as often as they or I would normally have expected. 

Felix is out in front again, mainly because Richard, who is hunting him this season, is able to get out twice a week, which I often can't manage.  Jacko has done very little because after he fell in the  bog in September he had to have quite a lot of time off - in fact he only came back into work in December and will only have short days for the next month or so at least, as his fitness builds up again. 

Angel has done well - although his mileage hasn't been huge he now has a great attitude and absolutely eats up the miles once he is out.  I took this photo on Saturday, as we clattered up a particularly treacherous path which consisted entirely of loose rock and granite outcrops - quite nasty especially as it also had a small river running down it after the torrential rain we'd had.   

As always, though, the boys took it all in their stride, although Charlie did get rather depressed at an earlier stage in the day before he and Andy had found us - he started off very cheerful but Andy arrived late and it took so long to find the field that he began to think he was out on exercise - in the rain, miles from home and all on his own...Poor Charlie...he was enormously relieved when he finally heard hounds :-)

ETA:  THE SUN IS SHINING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It rained last night but now the sky is BLUE for the first time since Christmas :-)