While the sun has been streaming down on Cornwall (as well as much of the rest of England I believe), we’ve been out of doors. After much of the day spent out and about again, we decided to don walking boots and take a trip up to the top of Sharp Tor.

It’s the very start of lambing season for the moorland sheep – they need to start later than the sheep who are cosseted enough to live in fields and lower altitudes so their offspring get a better chance against our relatively extreme weather. We’re seeing the first tiny little day-olds just starting to appear on the moor. Along with the lambs, we’re bleating on ‘aaaahhhhhhh’ and ‘oooooohhhhh’ and ‘ickle lambos’ ‘did you see that one – ahhhhhh’ and all other such stoooooopid talk.

So, having just confessed to being as soft as butter, I’m now going to confess what I did to make DM roll around on the floor laughing. I thanked a ewe for getting out of our way. Yep, I did. I turned around after passing her and said ‘thank you’ to her because she had been standing on the path looking at us as we approached her and she decided to skip off the path a few metres so that all four of us could pass without mishap.

We are, of course, VERY careful with the dogs at this time of year, that’s not to say we’re not always careful but it’s particularly important with young around. Rosie is totally oblivious to all other critters than Archie and us. She has been known to not notice a rabbit shoot between her legs and did, last spring, come across quite a young lamb, separated from its mum by the path and therefore us. What did she do? Yep, she ran behind me and hid. From a lamb! She lost her street-cred as a sheepdog there and then and has never regained it.

Archie has, on the other hand, earned some latitude in recent times through exemplary behaviour after many years of ‘proving himself’. He started off on the lead at all times around sheep, then gradually, through demonstrating restraint, has progressed to only being on the lead after a bout of wilfulness. By wilfulness, we mean that he’s not come back to us immediately when called, that’s all – he has NEVER chased a sheep.

Anyway, if we do happen on a group of sheep, we tend to slow our pace and wait for them to amble off before going on our way. This seems to work for everyone involved.

We all know where we stand.

These two were part of a little group on a footpath between two high walls today. As we approached all of them jumped up onto the wall and watched us as we passed, stamping their feet to tell us not to venture any closer. We were happy to oblige and as soon as we passed, they hopped down again and carried on munching.

Last year, I was trying rather pathetically to encapsulate the smell of cat's piss in a picture.