Wednesday 14 April 2010

Making The Most Of It


It won't be long now before I am unable to get through to the headland due to cattle in the fields: cattle hate dogs, and I have three of them.  My dogs are not the Lassie type, who are forever committing heroic feats in order to rescue Mother from all oncoming dangers, they work more on the principle of "We love you Mummy, we really do, but if someones going do die, then it might as well be you!"  When they see those bolshy cattle, come hurtling across the fields in our direction, they hide quickly behind me, or leg it as fast as they can.  They don't notice the fence in between them and us, they just run and ask questions later.  To be honest I don't know how they manage to run, as my legs normally turn to jelly, and I freeze and hope that the fence holds tight.  I still have nightmares about the large black beast with glowing eyes and animosity flowing through every vein in his body, the body that was hurtling towards me and the fence at breakneck speed.  When he skidded through the mud, and stopped a quarter of an inch from the fence, I finally understood what they meant in the novels when they talked of people fainting from fright.  It was some moments before I could even breath, never mind move!  I did mention to the farmer that I thought all cattle should be banned from the fields that 'I' want to walk through, but I assume from his howls of laughter that he thought I was kidding.  Does the man not realise that 'I' am the MOST important person in the world?! :-)

So for now I am making the most of the peace and tranquility of these desolate headlands; the domain of the Chough, the Peregrine and the Hare.  A place that is left to nature, and the sheep, for 95 percent of the time.   It is an area of steep cliffs that tumble down to jagged rocks and small sandy coves, coves that only the birds and the seals visit.  The paths along the cliff edges are treacherous: narrow foot wide gullies that cut deep into the pebble-dashed clay; paths that trip you unless you pay attention to where you are going.  You need two hands to climb up and down the steep slopes, and it is no place for the faint hearted.   Deep gullies cut through from the fields, where streams have run for hundreds and hundreds of years, gullies that are a-swill with mud and reeds. You need to be good at jumping to avoid sinking into the quagmire.

Sometimes the dogs and I just sit and stare: with views on a clear day across to Ireland and Holyhead, it is a great place to just pass the time.  And sometimes we scramble up and down, all of us breathing loudly, and feeling truly alive.

5 comments:

  1. you are alloted 124 gb per account. I was using the easy route with picasa3 blogger turned out all the photos in picasa are counted. what a farce, no worries. have put links to my new posts on nilelife2. carry on regardles minus picasa3.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That sounds just perfect; apart from the cattle lol

    ReplyDelete
  3. I empathise with the scary cattle situation having got chased by a herd last summer after I spooked a sleeping fox - made it to the stile in the nick of time.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Now i can relax a bit and read your blogs. and now I know where you live. I used to go fishing in that bay for herring and whitefish, we hired a boat from Portdinorwic for the day all brave 12 of us Bangur lads aye, on board an ex lifeboat. with a purring gardner engine in its bowels. lovely days to remember. don't you just love cattle. never did breed them I was going to buy a dexta. for our rare breed collection. but they were a lot of money,
    but out neighbour had lots of nanny cows me and miss mole (my dog) would sit in the middle of the field and wait for all the cattle to come around us in a circle you could almost hear miss mole say , wait, wait, wait for it as soon as one of the cows got brave enough to sniff miss mole, she would jump up and give the cows a fright. she thought that was great fun. then we would leave the field slowly with a trail of cattle following and just as we were about to leave the field miss mole would give one more scare. even though the hereford bull was the biggest he was not the bravest. the calves were instinctively nosy.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice to stumble on this. I loved my several weeks in North Wales far too long ago. Particularly enjoyed the description of the the "bolshy" cattle. Backyard and Beyond: http://matthewwills.com/

    ReplyDelete

Many thanks for your visit. Your comment will be visible after moderation.

About Me

My photo
I live in North Wales and spend my time caring for animals, walking in the countryside, photographing nature and reading. I hope to share, in photographs and words, some of the beauty that I see. If you enjoy the photographs on this blog then you might like to take a look at my Flickr photostream. View my complete profile for links to both of my blogs.