This is no ordinary picnic

On Saturday 3rd August I attended my first League supporter event as staff. I’m usually working behind the scenes supporting employees but when the Head of Campaigns said they needed some help for an event in Glastonbury I volunteered and I am so glad I did.

The event, held at the iconic Glastonbury Tor, was to raise awareness of our National Trust campaign. We have been lobbying the National Trust to ban trail hunting on its land. With the help of our supporters and the pressure put on the National Trust by the public we have seen the number of licenses issued fall year on year. During the last hunting season, we also saw for the first time, licenses revoked. But we would like to see it eradicated.

The event was a picnic, supporters joined us with their lunches to have a family day out at a National Trust attraction, we had cake, face painting and colouring competitions. Great wholesome fun. What you expect from a National Trust location, in stark contrast to hunting taking place on these beautiful landscapes.

This was a great opportunity for me to meet the supporters who attended the event, they put a lot of personal time and effort into supporting our cause and are fundamental to giving animals a voice.

Jac Freeman, the Regional Campaign Manager who organised the event had us set up in an ideal place to see a good footfall to the Tor from two different directions and as such we had a number of visitors to our stand.

A lot of people at the Tor were National Trust members, some were unaware of the trail hunting licences and were justly appalled. Some thought that the National Trust’s argument that this was only legal activity was a reasonable response, that is, until they heard that hunts were given 24 hours notice of monitoring which meant any illegal activity would never be found by such monitoring.

Opinions were mirrored by non-members and we had 100% agreement from everyone we spoke to that they would like to see an end to trail hunting on National Trust land and in fact an end to hunting for ‘sport’ everywhere.

This was a beautiful afternoon in the English countryside with family fun but also very productive in spreading the League’s aims. Lots of people signed their name to ask the National Trust to stop licensing trail hunting, they signed up for campaign updates, donated money and we were thanked many times for our work towards a kinder society for animals.