Yesterday I drove up to London to visit a friend and to go to an exhibition of paintings by Alfred Munnings at the National Army Museum. In the way of such journeys, my attention was divided between the road, empty of traffic and often straight as a die since it is Roman in origin, and the subtle beauty of the winter landscape.
The road passes pastures of winter-yellow grass, sheep, a few cattle on drier fields, small woods of grey naked trees, extensive arable fields of Cotswold brash, stony even as winter wheat is now showing bright. The road runs through some stunning villages, set beside water in the valley bottoms, with clumps of tourists roaming even in mid-winter. The walls and hedges beside the road arrived some 300 years ago when the vast sheep walks of the middle ages were enclosed and patterned into fields and farms. The stone walls are often now in decay as arable is far more profitable than livestock farming but they still delineate the hills. And of course, there are the hunt jumps, inserted at useful points around the country to allow hounds and horses to cover the ground in pursuit of a scent trail. Modern hunting no longer has foxes or hares in the equation. So then my mind wanders off to consider the extraordinary generosity and liberal hospitality of land owners and farmer who permit a hunt to cross their land. And the hard work necessary to organise hunting across multiple farms. Last week, the hospitality at the meet was wholehearted, warm and generous, even though neither farmer nor family chose to come out with us. Each local hunt ties the rural community together like the walls and hedges in the landscape. It is deep tradition and a unique culture that shapes the countryside. And the exhibition of Munnings‘ paintings of the Canadian Cavalry and the Forestry Corps in France in the first world war, last seen together in an exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1919, was eye-opening and really excellent.