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Outdoor Footwear
Henry Harington chases “wild”
ponies in his posh Hunter Wellingtons
V
isitors to Dartmoor are often amazed by the ponies roaming at When I am fit and able I normally ride in the Drift, hollering, yahoo-
will over the Moor. “Are the ponies wild?” they ask. No, and if ing and charging back and forth to stop recalcitrant ponies breaking
you get close enough to them, and it is possible to get close back and escaping to enjoy another year’s freedom. But, this year I
because some of the ponies have been tamed by tourists went on foot to test a pair of Hunter Balmoral Bamboo Carbon
feeding them, you can often see a brand on the pony’s flank. Wellington boots. After one of the wettest summers on record, late
A brand on the rump. “H” for Hunter ? The brand September was dry a bone. Often the Drift can be postponed by
signifies ownership, ownership by one of the hill driving rain or swirling mist.
farmers on the Moor who are Commoners so The job of those helping the drift on foot involves walking the
have grazing rights for sheep, cattle and ponies flanks of the column of ponies being rounded up by the riders to
on the Common – rather in the manner people make sure the ponies head in the right direction to the pound where
used to have rights to graze sheep and geese on they corralled and sorted, by the information in their brand, to allow
the village Common. the owners to take them to market. Older mares and geldings are
The word “brand” comes from the German dispatched to market while the foals born in the late winter and
word to burn and, as with the cowboys on the spring are returned to the Moor after a couple of days of worming,
prairies or the gauchos on the pampas, the ponies gelding and the all-important branding.
must be seared into the ponies skin with a red-hot Walking the Drift would be a tough test for even the best walking
iron with a distinctive design to mark them out as boot: it involved climbing amidst the gorse to the summit of
belonging to Jez, Sue or Lloyd, some of the farmers Honeybag Tor to drive the ponies over Chinkwell and down to
on the Moor who continue to raise ponies. Bone Hill rocks. There is boggy ground to the south towards
The reason I mention the brand is because Hunter, the Great Tor that is strewn with rocks and boulders.
make of Wellington boots I was testing for Footwear You don’t want the ponies to founder in the bog,
Today is a brand that is seared in the minds of country so the walkers squelch along its edge to “shoo”
folk in the UK. Wearing green Hunter wellies (and a green them back to the phalanx of cantering ponies
Barbour) is the caricature of what the townie wears when that is being driven towards Pil Tor, and then
trying to slip into the country set and be “one of us”. down the steep hill to Chittleford.
While Hunter Wellington boots now come in red, yellow, The Hunter Balmoral Bamboo Carbon passed this ‘off-road’
pink and purple, they remain a brand known as working boots or as test with flying colours. It is a supremely comfortable boot, tell your
robust footwear for sporting. customers. It is certainly designed for those who will stand in
Ponies used to be bred on Dartmoor in their hundreds of wetlands for hours on end waiting for a duck or goose to come into
thousands for the coal mines. They lived the first couple of years their sights. The boot boasts a charcoal fleece lining, the thermal
carefree, roaming the gorse and heather covered uplands, the very properties of which Hunter claim, “ improve blood circulation thereby
symbol and brand of what is today the Dartmoor National Park, with keeping the foot warm”.
their long manes flowing in the wind on the high tors. In winter they
eked out their lives turning their rears to the driving rain or Details:
stumbling through blizzards and snowdrifts to find patches of The Hunter Balmoral Bamboo Carbon (RRP: £110) also has the
withered vegetation on which to survive. benefits of the Balmoral Classic with the additional support of extra
But, there was a price to pay for the freedom. When their time cushioned insoles and a highly innovative Bamboo Carbon lining. This
came they were rounded up. They were herded to the ancient technical fabric has a unique ability to wick moisture away from the
markets in Tavistock and Chagford and auctioned to the mining foot and can acclimatise to temperature variations, making it a great
companies. From under the hammer they were driven to the pithead. all year round material for boot linings. The Balmoral Bamboo
Here, they unknowingly took their last ever glimpse of daylight. They Carbon features the same insole/outsole as the Balmoral Neoprene.
would live for the rest of their lives in the blackness of the mines, Available in dark olive.
haul trolleys, laden with coal from the pit face to the lift and empty
trolleys from the lift to the pit face. They were stabled, fed and finally
died underground.
Today, some of the more benign remnants of those traditions
survive. The new use to which the ponies are put is something of a
contrast from a life sentence in the Welsh pits. From the markets the
ponies today head for the leafy suburbs and paddocks of comfortable
houses where they become the love of the lives of countless
pubescent girls. As in the times of the mining ponies the route to
Farnham, Altringham or Seven Oaks begins with the rounding up of
the ponies from their “wild” existence on the Moor. Locally this is
known as “the Drift”.
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FOOTWEAR TODAY
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JANUARY 2010
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