An individual account of running the Bob Graham. Running Club Valley Striders Hound Trailing Instead of setting foxhounds to hunt Freddie the fox the sport of hound trailing sets the hounds to chase after a scented trail dragged for up to ten miles over the Cumbrian mountains in a test of the dogs' speed and stamina. The sport started in the Pennines and an early reference was in a parish record of 1750 in Wenslydale. This records that 18 old pennies were paid for a dead cat to be used as the 'drag' to lay down a scent trail for the pack of trail hounds to race after. Lighter than foxhounds the trail hounds are carefully bred and constantly trained.
Bookmakers attend all the trail meetings and vast amounts can be bet on potential winners.
Novelist Hugh Walpole dropped the starting flag on one such trail in Threlkeld in 1927. In those days thousands turned up to cheer on the racing hounds. West Cumbria, with its recent legacy of heavy industry, had been the centre of trail hounding, the working man's alternative to the rich landowner's foxhunting. A smaller trail hounding enthusiasm also exists in Cork and Kerry in Eire. Here the sport is called Draghunting and involves chasing live quarry in the winter and the drag in summer.