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Monday 1 October 2012

Mobbing by Moo Cows

friendly belted galloways

Today was the day for doing my adopt-a-path stuff at Blanchland and Edmundbyers. I considered, however, that since I walked the Edmundbyers path twice for the DCC guided walk only a week or two back, that I didn’t need to do it again and instead, I would investigate some of the shoreline paths at Derwent Reservoir, particularly as Bruno had been nagging to go there for a while as he’s never been. And neither had I.

But first, we had the little matter of the six or so miles from Blanchland , up to Townfield through Deborah Wood and back to Blanchland over the bridleways on the moor top.

This went well. The Deborah Woods paths are getting a bit muddier, probably since this last September that’s just drained away provided some 150% of the usual September rainfall and the summer , generally has been the wettest since Noah got his first dinghy. So no surprises there.

path to Townfield last May

The shored-up path to Townfield continues to fall apart very very slowly. I can;t detect much of a change since last May, in fact – but I’ll report it anyway.

And then we were ambushed. We entered a field full of suckler cattle and it became apparent, quite quickly , that they weren’t too keen on Superdawg’s presence.  I let him off the lead and he decided that walking close at heel would be a good idea in view of the  aggression starting to develop amongst our udderred friends.

They began to run at us and I had to wave my arms about and shout a bit to fend them off. Bruno retreated up the hill in short order. This was the wrong direction. I called him back. The cows got a bit madder and Bruno weaved amongst them, tail between his legs, causing even more havoc. A riot was developing. I did some more shouting as they came too close and chased them off. Bruno buggerred off in the downhill direction. This was a good decision as the now completely mental herd followed him at speed and forgot about me.

I didn’t take any pics as I was busy.

He waited for me by the gate. We escaped. there was a lot of noise behind us as we beat a retreat…

derwent reservoir dam aap blanchland 009

aap blanchland 012

To Derwent Reservoir. I’d intended to see if I could circumnavigate it. The answer was “no”.

A path goes up one side for a couple of miles and a path goes up the other side for a couple of miles, but a complete circuit would involve road walking. So we didn’t. Its very nice, though, and the path is well made and easy to walk on. I introduced Bruno to some belted galloways who were much more civilised than the sucklers and were only interested to see what we were and whether or not we’d brought any hay. Or silage. Or anything.

rowan berries - it's autumn, see?

We did eleven miles altogether.

Bruno’s attitude to cattle has hardened.

4 comments:

Dawn said...

Looks like you had an interesting walk Mike. Manic cows are always a worry. Glad you survived ok.

Meanqueen said...

That sounds horrible with the cows. I hope it never happens to me.

chrissiedixie said...

Dixie says she'd have given them cows a run for their money...she's all talk really.
Can be a touch scary though can't it?

Tony Bennett said...

We have cows in the field outside the office - bullocks actually. A few weeks back one escaped into the car park and was chasing the postman round his van. I used to think some of the dogs were bad enough when I did the xmas post as a student. Anyway, he's been a bit more circumspect about getting out of van since then.