The Sentinel Steer

Farm animals make me nervous; I admit it.  Until recently, however, contact with farm animals meant passing them by at 70mph or so.  Sure, when the kids were young we had our share of experiences at the petting zoo, and I even worked at one for a month when in college.  But somehow this did not prepare me for some of the experiences that are part of geocaching in southern England.  There have been a couple of occasions recently where the path to the next cache led across a pasture containing either cattle or sheep.  Two groups of caches come to mind.  The first is a pair of caches just outside the Isle of Thanet called "The Inmate" and "H2O no".  These two caches are along the River Stour on the Old Saxon Way (approx along the blue line in picture below), which traces the shore of the ancient Wantsum Channel separating Thanet from the mainland.  To get to these caches, one can go north from Richborough Roman Fort (Green Arrow, point A), or East from the Dog and Duck pub at Plucks Gutter (point B).  Coming from Richborough, the path leads through at least three separate pastures that may contain cattle.  Coming from Plucks Gutter, you pass through both sheep and cattle pastures.  I chose to start at Richborough Roman Fort and end at Plucks Gutter - with my wife dropping me off and picking me up. 

The other group of caches is a 12.5 mile circular walk with 34 caches and a bonus that is located in Essex just outside Swindon.  The village in the lower right corner is called Aldbourne, and the large road from upper right to top center is M4.  This past weekend found me in Swindon, so I did a half circle that took me through a field of sheep and a field of cattle (and a great deal of beautiful scenery). 

Both of these caching adventures were wonderful - done during days of terrific weather.  I heartily recommend both walks - except for the farm animals.  Sheep and cows are very different beasts, as we all know from the tales of the old West, but in my opinion they are both dangerous (I can hear my wife laughing at me, but its true).

Sheep are docile most of the time, its true.  They go about in groups herded by dogs and are seemingly incapable of independent thought.  Other times they are spread out in the field grazing, and seem oblivious to anything human in their vicinity.  The guy who took the video linked to the word docile, above, was on the other side of the fence.  Its easy to feel safe on the other side of the fence.  And on either side of the fence you are safe ... until lambing time.  When they have small lambs that are not capable of running away at a reasonable speed, a grown ewe will charge you.  Let us hope that you are near a fence to jump over, or can in some way demonstrate to the ewe that you are harmless (by jumping in a river, for instance).  Otherwise you are in for some rough treatment. One post to the "H2O no" cache describes an encounter in which the sheep rushed a cacher and he had to jump a barbed wire fence, ripping his pants in the process.  Must have been during lambing time.  When I made the trek in late May, the sheep mostly left me alone.  In the one instance where the sheep, with their lambs, obstructed my approach to the pasture gate, they were easily dispersed by raising my walking stick as though I was Harry Potter and shouting "MINT SAUCE!"

Cattle, on the other hand, are always difficult to predict.  They can be docile, especially if you are on the other side of the fence.  When you cross over into their pasture, however, all bets are off.  After about six different encounters, I can safely say that the best bet is to keep at 100 yards between you and the cattle.  Better yet, make sure they don't see you.  If you must go closer, you may notice that many of them turn to look at you.  They may be expecting something from you.  Hard to say.  Look for the one I've been calling the Sentinel Steer - or the Big Moo.  He probably looks like this:

The rest of the cows seem to take their cues either from this guy or one of his close associates.  I hate to think what might happen if he thinks you are a threat.  More likely he is trying to read you and see what you want.  During the two encounters in which the cows reacted to me in unison, they seemed to think I was there to take them back to the barn.  Imagine entering their rectangular pasture through a gate by the Stour river and facing a group of 20 - 30 cattle - and about 80% of them are looking at you.  Slowly they start to move - toward you.  I did what anyone might do.  I put up my hand and said in a loud, clear voice "Stop!  I'm not here for you, I'm just passing through!.....Please?"  They slowed a bit, so I executed a smart left face and started to walk to higher ground away from the river.  They hesitated.  As I approached the corner of the pasture, I veered to the right, parallelling the long side of the pasture (and the river) as the cattle continued to look at me.  At this point, the Big Moo muttered something and they all started to walk in the same direction as me.  Apparently, the gate through which they return to the barn was in the corner of the pasture to which I was heading.  They accelerated, leaving me behind.  Greatly relieved, I cut behind them and scurried to the small gate at the far end of the pasture by the river.  Fortunately for me, the terrain had enough of a hill that I could reach my gate while they were waiting at theirs, so I slipped out unnoticed.

My second close encounter was quite similar.  I entered a rectangular pen at one corner and noticed a row of 55-gallon (250 liter?) white drums in front of me.  Forty or so cattle turned to look, then came towards me rapidly.  I limited the small talk to "Stop!" and executed my abrupt left.  This did not deter the cattle, who merely pivoted a bit.  Rapidly getting to the near corner and veering right, it became apparent that I was not going to be able to circumnavigate the herd.  I stopped and put up my hand and said in a loud, clear voice (OK, I shouted at them)  "Stop! I have nothing for you, I'm just passing through!" and did an about face.  Perhaps my actions convinced them that I was going to let them out of the gate through which I had come, because they accelerated towards the gate (not toward me, thank God).  One of them even seemed to kick up his heels at the though of getting out of the hot pasture and back to the barn.  When it was clear that there were no more cattle between me and my objective - the far gate - I stopped, executed another about face and hurried along parallel to the fence, towards the far side of the pasture.  All the cattle stopped and looked at me.  Then they seemed to look at each other, and then they just looked down.   Perhaps I confused them to the point that they decided I was neither a threat nor their savior and therefore unworthy of their attention.  Once again I got past the herd intact - raising confidence in my ability to deal with cattle and confirming my assertion that they are to be avoided.  Love to eat them, not to meet them.

And when you get past the animals....