IT HAS been about 190 years since the Duke of Wellington’s men galloped with their hounds through the rolling Gascony countryside beneath the Pyrenees. But the English spirit has never really left Pau, the Iron Duke’s garrison town which later became an elegant Victorian resort.

Now, thanks to Britain’s imminent foxhunting ban and low-cost airlines, les anglais are about to return to pursue the local renard.

Jeffrey Quirk, a retired English accountant living in a chateau near Pau, is working with two historic English hunts — the Puckeridge and East Suffolk — to have outlawed English huntsmen stable their horses with the Pau chasse and ride with it next season.

“They are both about 20 minutes from Stansted airport, where Ryanair flies direct to Pau,” Mr Quirk, 58, said. “This is the best quality riding that I’ve seen anywhere in Europe. It’s somewhere between Hertfordshire and Tipperary.”

For soon-to-be deprived English huntsmen, the scene outside Pau on a sunny February morning does seem perfect. Hounds — one named Tony Blair — bay in their kennel and horses are grazing by the red-shuttered stables of “le Pau Hunt”, founded in 1840 by Sir Henry Oxenden, a Napoleonic War veteran. Ornamental palm trees and distant snowy peaks are a reminder that we are not in the Home Counties.

Close by lie some 60 miles of empty countryside running westward towards Biarritz, near-perfect hunting land with hedges, ditches and — more hearteningly — a welcome from the locals and not a single protester.

The ingredients seem ideal for Mr Quirk’s scheme. The British are pouring into southern France in pursuit of the Gallic idyll and English hunters are seeking new countryside. The local authorities are keen to promote the old English link, and the income it will bring, and the only “English” foxhunting club in France wants to spruce itself up.

Over time the club, whose riders included Winston Churchill, has dwindled to a handful of members. It has not hunted a real fox since the Second World War and Mr Quirk is its first English member for decades.

The 19 other members, who include shopkeepers, teachers, doctors and pensioners, dress in impeccable pink and observe all the rituals, but their hounds follow scent laid down in a dragged trail. La chasse à courre (mounted hunting), which thrives across France, chases deer and boar or dragged animal scent, and only very rarely live foxes.

“They have a fox problem here. They are not hunted and they are are lazy and don’t stray far from the copses,” Mr Quirk said. He believes that the French hounds will be hopeless at pursuing a live fox, so he is bringing in experienced hounds. Bernard Cazenave, joint Master of Hounds at Pau, said: “We think it’s grand to have the English back and it’s a great opportunity to develop.”

On the walls of the woodpanelled club room are old photographs of moustached Englishmen, stuffed fox and a panel with the names of the hunt’s 29 masters since 1840. In 1880-82, the master was James Gordon Bennett, the founder of the New York Herald- Tribune and a ballooning pioneer. Georges Moutet, the present Master, said that he was confident that les anglais would be welcomed back, and that landowners would not be upset by the thought of 50 mounted Englishmen pounding across their property.

The chasse federation which controls game sports, is enthusiastic. Les chasseurs anglais will benefit from an ancient French law obliging small landowners to allow hunters to enter their property. “We are very happy to do a favour for our English fellows in their time of need,” said M Moutet.

Senator André Labarrère, the Socialist Mayor of Pau, said that he was “thrilled that the English are coming back to hunt in the Béarn . . . it will be important for the local economy and will revive the image of Pau as France’s ‘British town’. Too bad if the anti-bloodsport people are not happy”.

M Labarrère, a former minister, is seeking EU subsidies to help rebuild the stables and kennels for the English arrival.

Mr Quirk said that conditions and attitudes to hunting are “like England 50 years ago”, adding: “The law says if your hounds are hunting vermin, you can go virtually through someone’s front door and out the back.” France’s anti-blood-sports lobby is tiny compared with Britain’s.

“People here are saying, ‘If you can’t keep your tradition alive in England, we will help you’,” Mr Quirk said. “We have got an English hunt here that was started by the Duke of Wellington, for God’s sake. I’m sorry, Mr Blair, but if you want to take the tradition away from England that’s fine, but the French want to help us keep it going and they really mean it.”

Not tally-ho but taiaut!

• There are 450 registered chasses à courre, or mounted hunts, in France
• There are 17,000 hounds, 10,000 hunt members, and about 100,000 followers
• Huntsmen wear the same pink as in England, but their version of “Tally-ho!” would be “Taiaut!”
• A total of 1.5 million people are involved in some way with chasses à courre, which have become increasingly fashionable in the past two decades. There is no major anti-bloodsports movement
• The quarry is usually deer, sometimes sanglier (wild boar) and smaller game and drag hunting — rarely foxes
• There are twice as many mounted hunts as 25 years ago and about ten new hunts are formed annually
• Until the Revolution, mounted hunting was the preserve of the King and his appointees. Louis XIV ordered the formal French hunting dress

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