A WEEK AT MELTON 35 



the coverts nearest to the town of Melton. This covert 

 was a gift to the hunt from the Lord Wilton who ruled 

 Melton socially for so many years. 



Not very far off we may see Thrussington Wold 

 drawn, a beautiful little wood of forty acres, and one 

 of the very few natural coverts on this side of the hunt. 

 From here you may ride over some very deep country, 

 and there are, unless memory deceives me, some fields 

 of rough choppy ridge and furrow only equalled by 

 some of the fields between Naseby Woolleys and 

 Naseby spire, in the Pytchley country. Indeed, the 

 best and the worst of countries lie side by side on 

 a Quorn Monday. There may be steep hills, rough 

 ravines and rugged ground crossed by the Ironstone 

 railway, or there may be beautiful grass by Saxelby 

 and Grimston, or, again, grass still, though much cut 

 up into small enclosures and stiffly fenced, as you work 

 northwards to Ellar's and Willoughby Gorses, with, of 

 course, the plough again, cold, sticky and deep, that 

 lies beyond the latter covert. It is hardly possible 

 for ordinary men to take anything like a straight line 

 from Ellar's Gorse to Willoughby. The distance is a 

 mile, but, with a good fox, hounds run across in less 

 than ten minutes, and unless you are in front at the 

 gaps, you will be far behind them at Willoughby. 



Another Monday covert is the Curate's Gorse, which 

 owes its favour with Melton to the fact that the line 

 of hills, on which it lies, offers a view of the Vale of 

 Belvoir and not seldom gives a gallop across it to 

 Clawson Thorns, or even, if luck be very great, to 

 Sherbrooke's covert, a glorious forty minutes away. 

 Some who were there will remember the gallop with the 

 Belvoir from the last-named covert to within a hundred 

 yards or so of the Curate's, now nearly a score of years 

 ago. A very varied line this, in which most kinds of 



