IT IS ONE of the more romantic sights of summer: two slow-moving bicycles ridden by men in brown coats and flat caps with a pack of hounds happily clustered around the wheels. In busy areas, you might pinch yourself thinking that you have blundered on to a film set or that one of Daniel Crane’s paintings had been brought to life. The scene radiates contentment: hounds with sterns aloft, people calmly pedalling. The pack move across as one at a single command, and anyone who has struggled to control a lone dog might marvel at the manoeuvre and the quiet way in which it is conducted. To the modern eye, more used to seeing bikes in the context of skinny rumps in Lycra, it could be a scene from another time.
In the days when hunt kennels bustled with grooms and staff for every eventuality, horses were used for hound exercise. Cobs in the main were brought out for the early days at the start of the summer before being replaced by hunters midway through autumn
