Tally Ho!

Saturday June 13th.   The weather was still muggy, but at least the temperature was being kept cooler by cloud cover.. And we were riding through pleasant pastoral scenery.....

........to reach the rolling wooded hills of Metamora.

 This beautiful area of woodland and lakes, interspersed with expensive properties and swanky horse farms, is where the well-heeled of Detroit come to chase foxes with the Metamora Hunt Club. With their smooth coated foxhounds and red coats, they subscribe to the traditional ideals of foxhunting, except they do not hunt to kill - quite an unusual concept in North America.
Thoroughbreds grazed in white railed paddocks, though thoroughbred is not a description I would use to describe this rather mangy looking beast of indeterminate parentage which we encountered at the entrance to one stud farm....

....and the foxes seem to be of a singularly be-whiskered variety.....

A python lurks in the waters ....

...thankfully only a log in disguise, though it made me look twice.

Through the Metamora woods...

A confident sign....

...does it end when one drives back out of the gates, so one is permanently confined to barracks?

At the end of a long day, Lady took matters into her own hooves when she turned decisively into a riding stables just outside Oxford.  Who was I to argue, and happily Lori at the Majestic Equestrian Centre welcomed us in for the night.