About Beyond the Hedge: The People and Stories that Shape the British Countryside
Welcome to Beyond the Hedge where we go in search of the places, people, traditions and tales that make rural Britain extraordinary. Join us as we head out along the backroads to meet publicans, writers, hedgelayers, butchers, poets and keepers of everything from pigs to grey partridges to bees. We explore often-complex and sometimes-thorny themes with the help of real experts – practitioners with their hands in the soil and academics who’ve spent their lives thinking about things like the cultural history of fishing. Beyond the Hedge gets to the heart of rural Britain, as it was, is now and will be in the future. Subscribe to Scribehound to support independent countryside writing: https://www.scribehound.com/subscription
Charlie Jacoby: Might Hunters and Hawkers be a Protected Group Under the Equality Act? [6 min Listen]
You may have seen the story: the 2010 Equality Act could protect people who hunt. Here’s how it could play.
An interview at the Carter Jonas Game Fair Theatre has led to column inches and TV debates. Ed Swales of Hunting Kind, a group dedicated to ‘natural hunting’ with hound, ferret and hawk, obtained legal opinion which says that people who hunt could have “protected characteristics” under the 2010 Equality Act and that they must establish cases of discrimination against them. He announced his findings at the Game Fair.
Thanks to the publicity, the UK’s media has enthusiastically taken up the idea of protecting people who hunt or shoot in the same way that the law protects Roma or LGBTQ communities. There was an article in the Daily Telegraph, then the Guardian, then the Daily Mail, and hot on their heels came the TV interviews, on Good Morning Britain and even I got the call-up from GBNews.
There are few solid arguments against it, except for the emotional. Ed had one interviewer pointing out that Ed chooses to hunt, that he could choose not to hunt. The answer to that is that we choose to do everything – shop in supermarkets, go on country walks – that's culture. The culture Ed is defending is a different culture to the interviewer's and Ed is trying to protect it.
27 Aug 2024
Charlie Flindt - Tigger the Terracan: From Farm Workhorse to Retirement Riddle [11 min listen]
My faithful farm truck sits in the yard, not exactly sure how it is supposed to spend its days - or justify its hefty running costs. What's the future for such a loyal beast?
Join me, if you will, in some automotive anthropomorphism, and spare a thought for Tigger the Terracan, who sits in the farmyard, having a bit of an existential crisis.
Tigger, you see, is my farm 4x4, and, since our semi-retirement, it hasn’t had much in the way of work. When we were full-on farming, it was out and about most days: hauling, carrying, towing and giving lifts and shuttling me back and forth from my tractor and combine. And in all those tasks, it was pretty well unbeatable. But now its days are quieter. Almost too quiet.
Let’s go back a couple of decades, though, to when Hyundai was a bit of an unknown quantity in the British motoring world. In 2003, I was invited (as an F-list motoring journalist) to the launch of the Terracan in the North Yorkshire Moors. And as my test car made its way along a deep riverbed (not sure you’d be allowed to do that now) I was impressed. Here, I thought is an old school 4x4 of immense capability.
26 Aug 2024
Camilla Swift - A Year in the Life of a Huntsman - and a foxhound [8 min listen]
The life of a huntsman can sound idyllic – but life in kennels is tougher than it might look
For many a young thruster, or a hound-loving puppy walker, being a huntsman is the ultimate dream job.
To have your very own pack of hounds who look to you for instruction; to lead the pack in your scarlet coat, and uncover the mystery of the ‘golden thread’ – the so-called invisible connection between a huntsman and his hounds. Surely that doesn't sound like a chore?
The pomp and the ceremony are all very well, and watching the hounds parade with the huntsman blowing them on is a spectacle which the public love to see. But what is the reality of a huntsman’s job and lifestyle? Behind the gleaming brass buttons and the polished boots, what does the day-to-day look like?
With hunting traditionally sticking to set ‘seasons’, the job varies depending on where we are in the hunting calendar. Perhaps one of the first things to learn is that the hunting year starts on the 1 May.
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