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Ireland’s first organised side-saddle hunt was hosted by the Meath Foxhounds on Saturday 4th February 2012 and organised by the beautiful Oakes ladies. Pam and I travelled up the night before with great anticipation to follow the hunt. On arrival at 10am on Saturday to Kiernans pub in Carlanstown the buzz was already clear in the atmosphere. The ladies preparing for the day’s hunting looked superb in their habits and having only been in side-saddle on two occasions in my life, I was admiring the tenacity and courage and a little hint of jealousy of these ladies and the day they were due to face.

After a wonderful warming hot port kindly served to me by local man Joe, we got the camera’s out ready to shoot. With people milling around everywhere and followers turning up in their droves to follow this unique occasion it was hard to know where to turn the camera first, but then of course one of the ladies mounted and it was obvious where to start.

We were flying with the camera and feeling hyped with the whole occasion and it finally came to the time to set out onto the road behind the large field. Unbeknown to us our day was to be far shorter than we had planned for. Not long after setting out on the road we had a catastrophe and this came via our accelerator cable in our vehicle which unfortunately couldn’t take the excitement of the day and snapped!  Feeling the drop of the pedal under my foot came the drop in my chest when I realised that this meant the end of the road for us. Soon after though came a lifeline as the pounding of hooves could be heard in the distance and we had one last shot of the day to take. Camera’s out and ready and lone-behold here, from a distance, we could see the hunt pounding the road towards us and into the field beside our downtrodden car.

Some very kind gentlemen stopped to aid the damsels in distress and local garage owner Patrick Fennesy fixed up our car to take us home, but by the time we made our way back to Kiernans the day was done, but we did hear tell of mighty fences the hunt faced from the mud covered riders! Tally Ho, there is always next year!
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Short article on StabletoStable Magazine
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