Epic day's hunting, and a visitor's take on barefoot

Still tired after a monster day's hunting yesterday - 39.9 miles on the GPS (about 65km), by far the longest day I've ever had. 

I was supposed to be having a short day on Felix but cutting short and leaving for home rapidly became impractical as we headed further and further out into the moor and further and further away from the trailer...

We covered an amazing variety of terrain, as always, from good old pasture to woodland, open moor and stony lanes.

I was pretty amazed when I looked at the GPS to find we already had 30 miles on the clock, and were in the middle of nowhere, with miles and miles still to go.

We met some surprised stags and hinds - maybe they knew we'd started the day about 15 miles away...(!)   Fortunately Felix was full of beans and although it wasn't what I would have chosen, he was none the worse for his epic day.  In fact as I creaked around the yard when we'd eventually got home, he had more than enough energy to trot off round the track at speed, then try and lead Jacko astray and escape up the lane instead of going out to the field .  He was hungry, but apparently 40 miles across Exmoor is just no big deal...

Quote of the day came from a well-turned-out visitor, who was riding back at the end with us.  She had followed Felix all day and noticed he had no shoes, and said "I suppose you can get away with that on the moor".  

I try to always be polite to visitors, so I just smiled, instead of pointing out that several horses who'd lost shoes had had to go home early. 

I also didn't remind her that as well as being on the moor, we'd done a considerable part of our 40 miles over very nasty flints, old droves paved with  big pointy rocks and along the roads - all at trot or canter.  

I also didn't say (as I would have liked to) "You don't need to shoes horses for Exmoor - tell you what, lets whip the shoes off and your horses can try hunting across the moor without shoes as well!  Oops, they appear to be crippled..."