We had a very lucky escape over the week-end - On Saturday we took four horses hunting as the hunt met in the village - We were going to have a second day at Cheltenham but decided that these horses in particular would benefit from a days hunting so we took Jess, Paddy, Flash and Dancer - we were just on our way back at second horses when the fox took a direct line towards our farm with the hounds in hot pursuit - We had turned all the other horses out as the hunt normally just go around the top side and don't go down the lane into the paddocks, anyway, we could see that they were all heading in that direction and by the time we caught them up we had two empty fields and four horses missing, luckily Definite Dawn had been caught by an onlooker but the other three, Ben, Button and Ponty were no where to be seen. Doug and I followed their tracks and could see that they had gone at great speed into the village heading towards the main Banbury to Daventry road (A361) It was horribly worrying as that road can be incredibly busy. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after what seemed like an age Doug received a call from someone who had seen them heading down the main road towards Banbury and luckily someone in a van had seen them coming and stopped the traffic whilst someone else opened a gate to a field at the side of the road. We were dreading picking them up as we didn't know what to expect but when Laura and I got there (Doug was still searching on horseback) we were amazed to see that although they were in a muck sweat there wasn't a scratch on them. THANK GOODNESS. They had gone at least a mile down the main road and how they didn't get hit by a vehicle is a complete miracle - they could have killed someone or been killed themselves so we have a lot to be thankful for. They were all fine this morning and seemed to have enjoyed their free range hunting, we can say they are qualified now!