With the Evesham Vegan Fair going ahead today, we split the group into 3 in order to man a stall at the fair as well as go to the Ross Harriers and North Cotswold hunts.
The Harriers had their ever-dwindling presence with just the 4 hunt staff, a (very small) handful of supporters and they packed up soon after 3pm. The day wasn’t without event though (please support South Wales Hunt Saboteurs in getting a new window…) and the presence of ex-Harriers terrierman James Smith was noted along with his bestie Luke who was nice having an outing in the countryside for the day.
Meanwhile, at the North Cotswold, we found that we were to be stalked all day by 3 young ladies who like our taste in wellies, share a different taste in music and apparently do requests for singing…* Having listened to Classic FM from their car radio at live-orchestra-from-the-front-row volume, we decided to lose them and head inland instead.
* hunt “observer-stewards” as they called themselves make noise near us to stop us being able to hear the hunt and hounds and in order to stop foxes from heading in our direction – sabbing the sabs, basically
All we will say for now is that towards the end of the day we witnessed 2 holloas as a fox broke from a wood and ran cross-country with hounds in cry in pursuit. We, too, broke cover at this point in order to gather footage and try to intercept and were quickly pursued ourselves by falconer Calvin Crossman and eagle (still with hood on, definitely not hunting, hounds in full cry and giving chase across fields and fields nearby…) and his mate on the quad who kept riding at sabs to get in our way. They backed down as it became clear that we wouldn’t and sped out of the area as we neared a blocked badger sett in the field. One sab carried on the chase whilst the other gathered evidence and unblocked the entrances.
Throughout all this, over at the vegan fayre sabs were consuming huge amounts of cake, selling our new greetings cards (all made with recycled paper, eco-friendlier ink and posted carbon-neutral!) with photos taken by 3C sabs and promoting our ever-popular tombola and caption competition. Thanks to everyone who took part, donated or just came for a chat. Cheers also to Black Badger Printworks for the help with the stall, leaflets and banner! And to Word of Mouth cafe in Evesham who donated gift vouchers for vegan food / drink as a prize for the caption competition!
Good luck to the injured pigeon who successfully and impressively evaded capture despite the shot-wounds in his wing. He showed he could fly out of danger and pigeons are hardy, so fingers crossed.
