February 13, 2016
Everyone Knows Bundles Murdock, But She Knows Everyone Else!
Catherine “Bundles” Murdock is the lady to seek out when paying your cap at Orange County. Be sure to observe proper protocol by enclosing your check in an envelope with your name and address. Ms. Murdock is one field secretary who knows her protocol! / Douglas Lees photoIn a recent article in the Loudoun Times-Mirror, Billie Van Pay wrote, “Almost everyone in horse country knows Catherine ‘Bundles’ C. Murdock, a fourth-generation member of a family well-known for its community leadership and for helping make the area known for its foxhunting.”
Indeed, Murdock is a long-time member of the Middleburg, Virginia community and the Orange County Hounds, serving as honorary secretary, field secretary, and road whip. And “almost everyone in horse country” does know her. But Murdock knows everyone else. Like Barbara and George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Queen Elizabeth to name a few.
Murdock was born in New York, but Middleburg has always been home. Her grandfather William Philander “Pappy” Hulbert came to Middleburg more than one hundred years ago, and her mother grew up on the family farm, Stonehedge, before her.
Foxhunting in the “Garden of Ireland”
West Wicklow Senior Master and huntsman Rupert Macauley takes hounds to covert. / Noel Mullins photo
Well-known hunting author Willie Poole once said, “There is no landscape in the world that can’t be enhanced by a pack of hounds.” County Wicklow, known colloquially as the Garden of Ireland, has a reputation for beauty quite on its own. Add the foxhounds to a landscape of blue skies, sheep grazing in green fields, extensive plantations, and snow-capped hills, and the image describes perfectly my day with hounds from Pat Kavanagh’s Hampton Lodge Equestrian Centre at Brittas.
