From eventer to reiner: Emma Gedge’s story.

Exploring the wilds of Wyoming on horseback is what made Emma Gedge fall in love with western riding. One trip to Cody, Wyoming in the United States of America over a decade ago, turned into a second, and then a third to the remote Big Horn Mountains years later, which then led ultimately to José, here in the United Kingdom and a budding partnership as British Reiners having made the transition from English riding to Western.

“I felt like my soul belonged, it felt so familiar even though I’d never been out there,” Emma shares as she recalls her time in Wyoming. “It was the summer of 2010, I went out on one of those gap year packages where you go and work on a working ranch,” she explains as rain thunders down in the background of our call, typical of our British summer.

Emma’s first stint was a three week trip, though having loved it so much she returned the following summer and helped the ranch owner to run the programme. Western riding, and riding the trails in Wyoming taught Emma to, “appreciate what’s around you. Here, we like hacking but often we’re so focused on getting round the route in one piece and getting home in time for the next thing, whereas out there, we’d head out for hours, maybe hang around a lake for an hour and just enjoy being out there with the horse. It’s so different.”

The last time Emma travelled to Wyoming was in 2017, when she stayed with a friend who enjoys Dual Citizenship, allowing her to work without the visa limitations many of us face, Emma shares how, “I stayed in the staff cabins for free and basically just rode around and had a great time moving cattle and just riding around enjoying the scenery basically.”

Upon her return, she couldn’t seem to shift that pull towards western and after sitting down and asking herself, what was it she really enjoyed? She landed on the idea of riding western over here. After all, it couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Prior to her western inspired way of life, Emma grew up with horses, she told me how, “I was very fortunate, my mum was super into horses so I was brought up with them really. We had the classic shitland at home and a little, cheeky Welsh Section A pony. I remember going to try him on Salisbury Plain, he kept turning around and biting my feet as I was riding and Mum was like, ‘we’ll take him,’ I was like really?” She laughed at the memory.

Towards the end of her time at university, Emma rode for a couple and she tells me how, “I did the classic thing where I fell in love with one of the horses and ended up finishing uni and returning home with a 17.2hh five year old, which is when my eventing days started.”

After producing the event horse up to Novice, Emma explains, “I was quite aware he was at his most marketable then, and competing was so expensive, so I decided to sell him. I was horseless for a while and originally thought this is quite nice, but I quickly realised I missed it.”

Cue, Mustard. After spotting an advert for a barely 14hh Buckskin, New Forest x Appaloosa in Dorset, it was like a lightbulb moment for Emma as she thought, she could do western with him. Mustard came to live with Emma and she shares how, “we gave it a go, I pretty much taught myself, and him.” By this point, in 2019, it had been a couple of years since Emma’s last trip to the wild west, and so, she explains, “through Instagram and YouTube mainly, I found the area I was into which at the time was ranch and western horsemanship, the likes of Buck Brannaman’s teachings which was around producing a horse that is useful to have on a ranch.”

With the luxury of a private yard, “no one was really judging what I was doing whilst I figured stuff out. I tried to learn as much as I could. Mustard had never done western either, but he would do a lovely little stop and was nice and free in the shoulder, which helped when we did cow work together as he could get to where I needed.”

It was the cow work which opened up a new avenue of possibilities for Emma when it came to the UK’s western community. At the time, Emma was based in Gloucestershire (now in Hampshire), just a 30 minute drive from Bob Reader and Alison Bucknell of Reinhill at the Hyde, who breed a small amount of American Quarter Horses and host cow clinics, so Emma embraced the opportunity and joined with Mustard, gaining experience and getting to know Bob and Alison.

After completing a couple of cow clinics with Bob and Alison, and also up at Sudbrooke in Lincolnshire, where she had a go at team penning and ranch sorting, Emma explains how, “I had a super time, but I realised I was kind of pushing Mustard to his limits, he was only a little 13.3hh New Forest and so I started to explore the idea of wanting a Quarter Horse and maybe getting into western more, so I spoke to Bob and Alison.”

It was this conversation that bought about José, “if it wasn’t for Mustard, there’s no way I’d have been able to afford José, I owe a lot to him really. Bob and Alison had got to know Mustard and loved him and so I was lucky enough that we did a part exchange of sorts.”

Coming to Emma as a relatively blank canvas four year old, she admits, “I realised I had quite a talented horse in Jose, who is reining bred by a popular stallion, Magnum Chic Dream. The stud’s offspring have earnt over $9million in the shown pen, I guess it’s like the equivalent of having a showjumper by Big Star in the English world..”

Two years later, and now a six year old, the duo have entered into the performance side of western and reining specifically and have ended their first competitive season together as British Reining Level 1 Green as Grass Champions 2024.

You can read Emma’s full interview with Holly in the magazine by ordering your copy here.

Our role as stewards of the countryside…

The countryside isn’t just the place in which many of us reside, work in or enjoy spare time within, immersed in our hobbies whether that’s; horse riding, shooting, working dogs, fishing, off-roading, hiking, flying birds, the list goes on. It is an intrinsic part of our lifestyle. Without it, our way of life ceases to exist and I believe we all have a unique responsibility to protect and conserve it for future generations. We are stewards of our countryside.

Whilst many of us would refer to the collective of countryside folk as a community, and we are to an extent, the community is far removed from the way in which the countryside community operated in years gone by. Locality was at the heart and soul of any rural community, people supported local businesses and farms, and were proud of their surroundings, and as such they cared for them. Whilst similarly, skills and passions were passed down through generations within communities, knowledge was transferred and lapped up with farming being one of the prime examples of this with older generations teaching their sons and daughters the way of the farm, passing the gauntlet down as they did. For me, much of my equestrian knowledge was gained from hours upon hours spent with women much older than me, who passed on their experience. It is this, in part that helps to keep much of our lifestyle alive.

Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting we go back to the above way of life entirely.

For the traditional cowboys and cowgirls in the wild west, much of their way of life is diminishing and it is only through sheer love, passion and a deep respect for their lifestyle that it continues when far ‘easier’ solutions are available as 4x4s and off-road utility vehicles have been introduced. There is in fact only two working cattle farms (I could find) in the UK which still use horses to work their cattle; Sudbrooke Cattle Company in Lincoln and Meldon Farm in Dartmoor, home to Dartmoor Riding Holidays, who’ve diversified to support and preserve their all-but extinct way of life here in England.

Now, with the evolution of technology and transport, our world has opened up and in many ways our community has widened but, we still need to engage with it for it to survive. Increasingly, our way of life is under threat, not only through land lost to development and technological advances but also as opposition grows from those against farming and government policies like Labour’s Rachel Reeve’s crippling inheritance tax changes, consuming meat, traditional country pursuits like shooting, as their grip on our heritage fades, along with the decline of both rural education and awareness within main stream public life taking nose dives.

We are in the midst of a stark epidemic of disconnect between the public and the countryside and its associated way of life.

Tania Coxon, founder of The Country Girls UK, is one woman who understands the importance of community and the positive power it can yield, through her membership based community brand. Talking of its inception Tania shared with me how through her Instagram where she shared about on-farm pest control and management , “I received tonnes of messages from people explaining how they never knew farmers needed to do this, and so in response, I began creating educational content about why we do it, and the impact it would have on our bottom line if we weren’t to shoot the pigeons. Dozens of ladies would reach out to me after each video expressing a genuine interest in how they could get into shooting.” Tania explains at the time, she wasn’t aware of anywhere to signpost these ladies, and so set up a WhatsApp group to bring them all together, “within a couple of days the group had about 400 women in. I set it up whilst sat on the JCB in the yard, and it just kept pinging constantly. I put a message in the group shortly afterwards saying I was thinking of organising a shoot, who would be interested... and four years later here we are, now one of the UK’s largest women’s shooting communities.”

In the past we’ve traditionally lived within communities, from small villages working together as a team to provide and look out for one another, to tribal situations, but in today’s world we live in such an isolated and astutely independent way. Besides our immediate family or partners, we don’t really immerse ourselves in communities, though there does appear to have been a shift in recent years... especially as our way of life becomes increasingly under threat of change. “I’ll always remember, one member’s summary of her experience,” Tania begins, “she said she ‘joined for the shooting but stayed for the community,’ and that really embodies everything we are. Yes, people may initially come to us because they want to learn to fish, shoot or play polo,” Tania explains before continuing, “but actually, they stay because they meet their best friends.”

I think this it is an important point to touch on, as a ‘community’, and like many others, we are viciously defensive of our way of life, sometimes to our detriment. If we are not actively encouraging new people into our world with open arms, and minds, then how can we expect the countryside to survive, let alone thrive, during a time of our history in which our lifestyle and industries face so much oppression from the woke, un-educated and anti communities?

Crafting positive PR for the countryside is vital for protecting our lifestyle. Faye Archer of Kilchurn Marketing and I sat down to talk about this very topic. Highlighting how rural communities tend to shy away from celebrating the lifestyle, Faye says, “I think we feel like we have to hide under a bit of a bushel, as though we’re not allowed to talk about our passions. It seems we feel like we can’t without getting criticised despite having the most amazing stories to tell.”

The countryside and its rural communities contribute so much to the wider economy and society, why is it then that we feel we almost need to suppress who we are and quell our pride and passion for our lifestyle? Faye comments, “some parts of the British media do a good job at making us feel guilty for our way of life and its practices. We can’t seem to tell our side of the story.” Something which is an additional challenge if the media is bias, though our news outlets should not be, we all know how misleading it can be and the power of influence it yields.

“The British Horseracing Association (BHA) have done lots for horeseracing,” Faye begins, “though when the antis targeted the Grand National in 2023, the media were quick to talk about the welfare risk and publicised the fact that four horses died over the four day festival,” something which PETA inaccurately claim as having died within the race itself. The media were hot out the gate publishing these click-bait, heart-wrenching headlines, yet as Faye highlights, “what they didn’t cover was the improvements that were made to the jumps or the ground to make that year’s event safer.”

I was curious as to why that might be... It appears to me, that we as a community are not very good at barking back. Is that because we are afraid to? Are we afraid of the possible backlash we might receive and the potentially negative impact it might have on our lives or business?

Despite being an intensely proud at the core, stoic community, one could be forgiven for feeling this way following the stories of activists vandalising property, releasing and endangering animals as well as confronting individuals. To wish to actively avoid such treatment is not hard to comprehend, though what can we do from a positive PR perspective to further protect and preserve our lifestyle? “Getting more positive stories into the media is absolutely one thing,” Faye explains, “but I think it is about telling our own personal stories within our own lives too.”

The Clarkson’s Farm Effect:

Storytelling is my jam, I could harp on about the power of it all day. One such individual doing an incredible job at storytelling at scale, which is having a positive impact on our rural communities is Jeremy Clarkson through his Clarkson Farm series.

Having shared his experience of starting up a farm and navigating the associated peaks and troughs, literal and figurative, the industry and countryside has felt a knock on effect off the back of Amazon’s hit-series success. Through the humorous (and relatable for many of us) documentation of events on the farm and various interactions between Jeremy, Lisa, Kaleb, Charlie and Gerald, the team have successfully increased the wider public’s awareness of the realities, complexities and challenges farmers face amassing millions upon millions of views.

In an article The Grocer published online, they reported that for online retailer Ocado, sales jumped significantly across meat, fish, fruit and veg from their ‘Best of British’ aisle, following the return of the show.

Change and evolution though, is required for survival, and that has to be true for our way of life too.

With wildlife being the heart and soul of our countryside, it needs protecting and it needs a voice. The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) acts as such. For nearly 100 years the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has been a champion for wildlife through an evidence-led approach to conservation. From waders to woodland birds, upland and lowland game management to farmland ecology and moorland conservation, wild salmon to mammals and invertebrates - the breadth of research carried out by the GWCT makes it unique.

Through sound advice and support the GWCT helps farmers, land managers and conservationists across the UK succeed in their mission to enhance the British countryside. The GWCT believes that wildlife can thrive if we focus on integrating it alongside other land uses, and that game management can be both sustainable, improve biodiversity and aid species recovery. More than 70% of the UK is made up of farmland - by following GWCT guidelines, farms have shown they can double their songbird numbers and remain just as productive as before.

It is not only individuals that have a responsibility as stewards of the countryside, brands and businesses do too, for it is them who often have significant influence over the consumer. From fundraising campaigns from staple country brands such as Le Chameau who have raised over £44,000 for The Royal Countryside Fund through their ‘Imperfects Campaign’, or INEOS Grenadier’s support of the Atlantic Salmon Trust and the Deveron, Bogie & Isla Rivers Charitable Trust, who have partnered together for the creation of a short campaign film as part of Project Deveron, featuring Jim Murray, an ambassador for the Atlantic Salmon Trust and founder of Activist Anglers.

Farlows is a British brand that’s been giving its customers the edge since 1840. It’s rooted within the countryside, its rich history and traditions, and along with its sister brand Sportfish, actively supports a number of angling and wildlife charities, including working closely with the above mentioned Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Our countryside and way of life isn’t going to preserve itself on its own. Together, we can make a difference, be proud of our lifestyle and step into our role as stewards of the countryside.

This blog forms part of a wider piece within In The Country Volume Two: Edition One which is available to purchase here.

Drawing from the heart with Lucy Claire Dunbar.

Most people I think it is safe to say, will have stumbled across one of Lucy’s illustrations by now, whether knowingly or not. From her heartwarming celebration of our late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee encompassing Paddington Bear or her tributes to the late Matthew Perry who famously played Chandler in Friends, Lucy’s pieces are touching and the emotions they evoke ripple through the screen and across the world into the homes and hearts of millions.

With her debut book having been released this week, now seemed the perfect time to share this story from the revival Edition of In The Country which is available to purchase here.

Lucy Claire Dunbar’s story though, isn’t without its challenges, there have been setbacks along the way, including my own rejection when it came to the In The Country calendar illustrations. I have since followed Lucy’s journey with great admiration and knew I had to interview her the moment I decided to revive ITC.

“It all starts with my parents really, Dad is an animator who was very successful in his time and Mum is more crafty. She does the best cards, if you need a gift for someone, you go to mum.” Lucy explains off the bat as we delve into the origin of her creativity. As one of five, all creatives, it is safe to say creativity and a love for art runs in the family. She goes on to share how, “if we went out for dinner growing up, we’d be sketching on drawing pads to keep us entertained.”

Referencing her eldest sister as her idol, owning her own business in nursery decor, Lucy explains how it was almost impossible not to feel inspired by her family, “it felt like a given that I’d follow their footsteps, though I didn’t believe I could make a career out of drawing, I had no idea how to make money as an artist, and so I thought I’d go into fashion.”

Throughout her education, Lucy pursued art, studying it at GCSE and A Level which is where she recalls truly falling in love with it. “I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing today without my A Level Art teacher Miss Holden. She helped me through a tough period as my health was beginning to take a nose dive.” Despite a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes and through genuine tenacity, Lucy completed her A Level and signed up for an Art Foundation which was, as she put it, “tumultuous darling,” thanks to a tutor who told her she wouldn’t make it as an illustrator as she wasn’t ‘good enough’. “I enrolled in a PA course,” as a result of her lousy lecturer’s words, no longer wanting to pursue anything art related, resigned to the fact she couldn’t, heeding the ill-directed advice.

“My parents agreed to sign me up to the course, but only if I completed two more weeks at college. I was coming home crying most days, I just couldn’t get on with it. I think, in hindsight, I was listening to others too much and comparing myself and my work to people who had found their flow, when I hadn’t yet.” During that fortnight, Lucy discovered graphic design, and suddenly a world of possibilities opened up to her. “I could still draw, I think ultimately I was trying to convince the tutor more than myself.”

Following the completion of her Foundation, Lucy went to University at Southampton Solent to study Fashion Graphics and here, thought she’d venture into print design, following in her sister’s footsteps. Here, the support was in stark contrast to that which she’d received on the course prior, “my tutors were amazing, Rachel (I don’t recall her surname) was incredible, she told me I could draw and advised me not to lose this in my graphics as it is what differentiates me and my work from others.” Lucy went on to share how, “the team at Southampton really believed in me and nurtured me and my skill throughout my time there, I was a woman on a mission on that course, my course mates would likely have thought I was crazy, but I loved it.”

However, it was during this time that Lucy’s health really began to deteriorate and she ultimately lost her sight for the first time. Her sight loss was by her own admission, a result of “not looking after myself, it was a complication from this in relation to managing my diabetes,” she shares. “No one knew how bad it was then, my sister was shocked when she first discovered the extent of it. I couldn’t cross the road by myself as I couldn’t see oncoming cars. By the end of uni, I basically couldn’t see much at all, my friends had to sign university documents for me. Though at the time, I buried my head in the sand, hid from it and didn’t want to face the problem, I was so focused on my work.”

Miraculously, managing to finish with a first, Lucy admits that she hasn’t been able to revisit her work from those dark days yet due to it being triggering. “Once I graduated, I don’t think I drew for four or five months, which is crazy because now there isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t draw.”

After receiving surgery which incredibly, restored her vision fully, Lucy shares how she feels as though she was given a second chance. It was during this time that she decided to launch her Instagram account @lucyclaireillustration, as a way to, as she puts it, “a) start drawing again and b) process what I had been through. I didn’t realise at the time what I was doing, but it became almost like a journal of my healing process.”

Looking back at that time, and opening her eyes for the first time after her operation with a clear view, Lucy humbly divulges how, “I’ll never forget seeing my grandparents for the first time since. I hadn’t realised how much they’d aged. I realised then, I hadn’t really seen people age for the past three years. Seeing the leaves for the first time on the trees, and noticing how green they were. I was amazed that I could distinguish between single leaves on the trees, they weren’t just one big blurry green blob. I didn’t know how little I could see until I could see again.” She explains how the surgeons fix one eye first, and then the other and so, “at one point, I had a literal split in half representation of what I had been living with, and clear sight.”

Though, the ride wouldn’t remain smooth for long. Two years later, Lucy lost her sight for a second time after a really serious episode with her diabetes, “I’m very lucky to be alive, I’m like a cat with nine lives.” After another pioneering operation, her sight was restored, something which for an artist is vital for the job, though she laughs to herself as she recalls how, “I came up with all of these back up plans if they couldn’t fix my eyes. I even thought of starting a new Instagram account called Blind Eye Designs,” she remembers, in between laughter which we share, “I was still going to draw, I thought people might like it and find it quirky,”

Thinking back to that time, I ask Lucy what the hardest thing about it was, she replied, “I actually found not being able to read, worse than not being able to draw. To escape in a book is one of the greatest things you can do, and the thought of never beingable to do that again was heartbreaking.”

With that said, Lucy’s book: The Book of Gifts is available to order now through Amazon, Waterstones and numerous other literary retailers. The description reads: ‘sometimes we all need a gift to help us through our life, or even just through the day. A chance to stop. Take a breath. Listen to your heart. That is the promise in The Book of Gifts.’

This is a snippet of Lucy’s full interview with Editor-in-Chief, Holly Thomson, to read the full story, you’ll need to order a copy of the magazine within which you can discover this, and so many others for yourself. Lucy is a genuinely inspirational individual that I feel hugely lucky to have interviewed. To browse the full collection of prints visit her website at: lucyclaireillustration.com

Creating custom country hats with UK Country.

“A hat is an expression of a woman's soul. It is something that she wears on her head, but it belongs to her heart. It is the keynote of her personality, the finishing touch that makes her look beautiful, smart, and sure of herself”

- Lilly Dache.

Emma Chapman created Uk Country last year after her search for a western hat of her own was fruitless, “I was looking for a product for myself and I couldn’t find it, other than in America. When I calculated the import costs, the overall price was extortionate, so basically, I wanted to be able to create it for myself and offer it in the UK, whilst making it as affordable and authentic as possible.”

With family from Texas who she’s never yet met, Emma explains, “I’ve always been intrigued about my heritage. I’ve loved anything to do with country ever since I was little.”

Since the creation of Uk Country, a handful of British hatmakers have cropped up, but what Emma offers is an unrivalled, unique and authentic experience, which in my opinion cannot be replicated.

As a stay at home mother, Emma shares with me how funds in the early days of her business were limited, so with her dream parked for now, she started by offering customised t-shirts as a way of building up enough funds to invest in her original plan, creating custom stiff brim and cowboy hats.

With her products being inspired by American western life and style, and seeming to be (at the time) the only hat maker of her kind in the the country, I was curious to know how she has honed her skill. “I taught myself,” she admits, something I myself can relate to with when I first started the magazine and taught myself how to design and create the files. “I’ve always been artsy,” she goes on to say, now that I can’t relate to, “the only thing I ever got an A in was art. But when it comes to the hats, it was really a learn as you go process. I picked up a hat and just did it. I’d spent hours watching TikTok’s by American hat makers, and I’ve long followed people from all over the States for inspiration. Trust me, my first hat is not perfect! Every day I am trying to improve but now I am confident in my art.” When it comes to improvement, Emma explains, “I’m constantly trying to find new things to offer customers when it comes to personalising their hats, at the moment I am looking into producing my own charms so that they can make their hat even more unique and personal to them.”

Talking of that first design, Emma casts her mind back, “it was a Highland Cow design. I posted it online and to my amazement I had six sales in the first day. I knew it was the route I wanted to go down, the business flourished from there really.”

The biggest challenge for Emma so far has been sourcing the correct machinery to achieve the result she wants. “It’s been a lot of hit and miss as to whether or not something is going to work, particularly with the branding stuff. You can’t just go out and buy a simple branding pen, it’s been a case of trial and error, finding out what works.”

As her custom hat orders took off, Emma began to look for ways to evolve and expand her business, enter: the Hat Bar. “I wanted to create a real hands on experience for others where they could come together and customise their own western inspired hat.” Through her exclusive hat creation workshops, she explains, “I’m trying to bring Texas style I love to the UK. The workshops are a space where people can come and listen to country music, surrounded by likeminded people all whilst creating their own hats.”

Having been lucky enough to take part in one of Emma’s ‘Hat Bar & Bubbly’ workshops hosted by my good friend Beth Holland of Lavender Moon in Poole, I can attest to all she mentions above. The evening was full of laughter and creative energy amongst a handful of women who started as strangers and left as new connections with country in common, some of whom went away with phone numbers and social media handles to stay in touch. With well known country music hits ringing out through the Lavender Moon shop as we all got stuck in to our craft, sipping away on bubbly and fuelling our design ideas with delicious, US inspired tater tots from the Honky Tonk Collective around the corner from the store in between hat making and browsing Beth’s current collection of western inspired products.

For me, it truly was a unique opportunity to immerse myself in creating my own hat which truly reflected my personal style. Mine, for example, pictured above, features a subtle dangling horseshoe charm and two brass rifle casings.

Hats are such statement pieces, and as Emma explains, they “really show people’s personality. I love going to workshops and seeing what everyone individually creates as it really brings out their personality. Just like you with your horse shoe charm; you have a love of horses and have horses yourself, this is now reflected in your unique hat.”

With hats the hot topic, I asked a seasoned wearer, if she had any tips for donning cowboy hats in the UK... Out in rural America, wearing a hat is so synonymous with the western lifestyle, we just don’t have the same attitude nor relationship with wearing hats here in the UK. Fedoras adorned with game bird feathers have become relatively common place at country events like, The Game Fair or horse trials throughout the year, though cowboy hats are still somewhat kept in the closet. “In Texas, wearing a cowboy hat is like putting on a pair of shoes,” Emma highlights, “here, it’s a confidence thing though it shouldn’t be.”

You can read the full article with Emma inside the carefully crafted pages of In The Country Volume Two: Edition One available to order via our online store.

The Start of Something New

It all begins with an idea, and here we are four years later, I have been unable to leave that initial idea in the past… It felt fitting to start this new blog/digital stories space with the returning Editor’s letter from within the revival Edition. So, albeit a little tweaked, here it is: In The Country was, and is a hugely significant part of my life and I have missed it, as I know many of you have too. And now? It is back, almost four years later, in print, but with a truly exciting new flair to the title, which I hope you will enjoy as we embark on this new era of In The Country together.

In The Country has always been a publication to cherish, a keepsake magazine. It is a celebration and reflection of our country way of life, but it has a more significant role, it is a documentation of our lifestyle, the beauty in it. The work of our community, the passion, the problems we face and the tenacity and resilience of those of us within it. Our country way of life is something to be proud of, to cherish and to preserve for future generations, storytelling and passing on those stories to those who come after us, is the oldest and most effective way of achieving that.

As your Editor-in-Chief, and founder, since In The Country first launched in 2017, I have changed, evolved and grown as a person. To put it bluntly, I am older, and with age comes (grey hairs and joint ache) experience and lessons learnt. Over the past seven years since it’s inception, and indeed perhaps more so in the past four, since the magazine ceased printing, I have learned a lot, many hard lessons but also I have discovered so much more to love about our countryside and the lifestyle we attach to it; from the breathtaking rural destinations on our doorstep waiting to be explored to the beauty of growing plants and produce, something I might once (aged 21) have considered disinteresting. It is with this evolved perception and further cemented love for our lifestyle that I embark on this new chapter of In The Country and of my own life; professional and personal.

This new flair you ask? We’ve all witnessed the explosion of country music in the UK over the past couple of years, and with it, the western lifestyle is becoming more widely recognised. For many of us, we’ve long loved it, with country music the soundtrack to our lives in the countryside, though now, stepping out in your cowboy boots is starting to turn heads in a new way. Less and less are we being looked at with mocking, more admiration. Blaring Luke Combs from your wound down car window is attracting relating smiles of mutual appreciation, less eye rolls and furrowed brows of those who just don’t see the appeal.

It is this, along with my own unwavering love for the music and lifestyle that has inspired me to harness this boom and stride out alone as the only print publication in the country sector to incorporate the western country lifestyle and country music within it’s pages and brand. This will, it is my hope, give In The Country it’s own USP amongst the long established titles, who, I see no desire, or point in trying to compete with for their readership, instead carving out our own, unique audience.

You can still expect the same content and style of writing and features celebrating those within our own United Kingdom who are doing incredible things whether that be in British Agriculture, equestrian sport, shooting and entrepreneurship, which you grew to love from In The Country. However, for those already buckled into the lifestyle or fans of country music, you’ll recognise familiar names and faces as future Editions launch, but for those that aren’t yet, I hope you’ll lean in and find inspiration from these individuals and their stories just as you have done with our exclusive content in the past.

I am committed to the journey. I am committed to the brand I’ve created and nurtured over the past half a decade, with a refreshed model I believe In The Country will thrive. No, I do not want ITC to sell tens of thousands of copies on the newsstand as I perhaps did in its earliest infancy, the goal has changed. I hope that I can run and create these beautiful Editions alongside my life with the horses, and eventually a family.

Over the past years, as a direct result of Covid’s impact on the economy, our production costs (paper, print and postal) have increased, and therefor so must the magazine, hence our higher cover price.

I’d struggled with imposter syndrome believing I wasn’t the right person to head this, I wasn’t good enough to be a journalist, Editor or a business owner. I’d look over at other publications and feel frustrated and disheartened I couldn’t achieve the content they did, secure the interviews they did or have the circulation they did. But now I recognise the beauty in walking your own path, and I hope through the stories shared both within these pages, across the website and social channels, the words, photography and videography can inspire you to recognise this too, whatever the season in nature and life, and whatever your path looks like.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading, for supporting In The Country whether you’ve bought this Edition or are reading a borrowed one,

Until next time…

Holly Thomson your Editor-in-Chief and Founder.