Countryside

It was the nightingale I liked best. Or maybe the auroch. The nightingale sang strong and marvellously sweet when all the other singers had given up, his voice filling the night. Each nightingale has a personal repertoire of 250 phrases made from 600 individual sound units. I ran into the auroch at six the next morning: enormous, uncompromising and emerging from the bush with a formidable set of horns. Now it’s true that aurochs went extinct 400 years ago; they were the wild cattle of Europe, Asia and North Africa, ancestors of all our domestic stock. But this wild and extraordinary place is full of free-ranging old English longhorn cattle,

In September last year I wrote about horses being illegally grazed and abandoned, and the inability of landowners to do anything about it. Back then, the government were poised to debate the topic for two hours in a bid to find some kind of solution to the problem. It’s not an issue that gets all that much attention in the media – after all, how much of a problem can a few ponies be? But fly-grazing, as this is called – actually causes a huge amount of trouble, for the horses themselves and for the people whose land they end up on, be that a private landowner or a local

A bit late, I know, to put in a bid for Jeremy Clarkson’s old job. But I think I might just accidentally have rediscovered my inner petrolhead. What happened was this. We’d just replaced our old sensible family car (a Ford Mondeo) with another sensible family car (a Skoda Yeti), only to realise that it just wasn’t enough. If you live in the country you really need at least two cars. The question was: what type should it be? Well, there are all sorts of cars I would like to own — the one I covet most of all being one of those evil-bastard Range Rovers, preferably the sport model with Kenneth

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/the-snp-threat-to-westminster/media.mp3″ title=”Simon Jenkins vs James Forsyth on the housebuilding myth” startat=1215] Listen [/audioplayer]There is no such thing as the English countryside. There is my countryside, your countryside and everyone else’s. Most people fight just for theirs. When David Cameron told the BBC’s Countryfile he would defend the countryside ‘as I would my own family’, many of its defenders wondered which one he meant. In the past five years a national asset that public opinion ranks with the royal family, Shakespeare and the NHS, has slid into trench warfare. Parish churches fill with protest groups. Websites seethe with fury. Planning lawyers have never been busier. The culprit has been planning

Some of the longest job descriptions belong to rural Church of England clergy. ‘So what do you do?’ ‘I’m the Rector of Aldwincle, Clopton, Pilton, Stoke Doyle, Thorpe Achurch, Titchmarsh and Wadenhoe.’ Every one of these place names evokes an ancient Pevsner-worthy church, smelling of candlewax, damp hymn books and brass polish. Though many villages no longer have a shop or a pub, most do still have a parish church used for regular services — even if only on the first and third Sunday of the month. You push open the creaky door, and last Sunday’s hymns are still up on the hymn board. Last week the brilliant blind member

Today marks ten years of a ban on hunting a wild mammal with hounds in England and Wales, except under certain exemptions. To understand what a fundamentally bad law the Hunting Act is, and why it must be repealed, it is best to start at the beginning with the original purpose of the ban. For all the talk of animal welfare the long battle over hunting legislation was not predominantly about foxes or other mammal species it was about class, politics and a gratuitous misrepresentation of hunting and the people who do it. This is not my interpretation, but the reality as admitted by many of those who promoted the

This time three years ago, I hadn’t jumped a single thing for almost ten years. This season, I am happily jumping hedges that my horse and I can’t even see over the top of. Crazy? Most likely. But when the adrenaline is pumping, and an inviting-looking hedge is looming directly in front of you — well, what’s a girl to do? The sheer joy of hunting comes from far more than just dressing up in a smart coat and shiny boots and drinking port. It’s the simple pleasure of being out in the field, watching the hounds do what they do best, and enjoying the pure beauty of the sport.

If like me you get all your news from the Cornish Guardian, you may have spotted an article announcing that the Fairy Investigation Society is conducting a survey. They’re seeking information from anyone who has seen any pixies, elves or sprites — all on a strictly anonymous basis. I rang the man behind the research and he told me that in just three months, he’s had over 400 replies. An example: ‘I was walking down a field in Scotland when I noticed a winged being leaning up against the side of a sycamore tree. He was as tall as the trunk, maybe 15 feet.’ You might laugh it off, but

The countryside is all very well so long as you know you can leave it. Funnily enough, exactly the same can be said for the town. I realise I have spent the entire year trying to decide whether to sell up and move from London to the wilds of Surrey. Or stay put in Balham. I’ve spent more evenings on Zoopla than can possibly be healthy. And now I think about it, I guess the reason I have struggled so hard to make a choice is that town and country are dependent on each other to produce their own special magic. I cannot enjoy the country unless I know I

The fabulous October weather is now just a memory but it made for a golden, old-fashioned apple day down in Somerset. The plan was to pick and convert a mound of sugar-rich Redstreaks — about 400 kilos — into a rather special vintage. We would pour the apple juice into an oak hogshead, freshly emptied of its whisky, to make a cider tinged with a 20-year-old malt. How good does that sound? The idea of the get-together was the idea of designer Bill Amberg and publisher Damian Jaques, who is a cider boffin. Various friends and their families convened by an old barn with a nearby orchard. We tipped piles of apples

I have fallen in love with an unsuitable male. My wife isn’t totally happy about this relationship because she recognises how dangerous it is. The problem with Eddie is that his vices are my vices. He’s reckless, an adrenaline junkie who likes always to be up front. Really, a most unsuitable companion for a skinny, breakable family man fast approaching 50. And did I mention how expensive he is? It’s as bad as having a high-class mistress or a serious cocaine habit, but I’m powerless to resist. I love hunting. I love my mount Eddie Stobart. When I’m riding to hounds, all my worldly cares vanish. It makes me feel

Yesterday, the RSPCA published the long-awaited review of its prosecutions policy. Interesting choice of timing – it finally released the critical report on the day of Cameron’s conference speech. Talk about burying bad news. The review recommends that the RSPCA no longer prosecutes hunts because it also campaigns on hunting, and calls into serious question the direction it has been taking. Personally, I think the charity needs a serious re-think after some shocking miscarriages of justice where it has pursued pet owners for very minor infringements, and been totally unaccountable and closed to any kind of public scrutiny. We now need a proper debate and I urge anyone interested in