Saturday's animals

Yesterday we made the journey up the M5 to my sister-in-law's in the Cotswolds. Lucy has married into a farming family and is a huge animal fan so it was inevitable that our trip would feature some four-legged creatures.

Three Labradors and a Jack Russell

The first encounter was of the canine variety as we tried to gain entry into Lucy and Pete's house. (Pete is Lucy's husband.) The Jack Russell (Lucy's) and black Labrador (Pete's) were doing their best to deter us with some scary sounding howling. Well it was scary sounding to me anyway. Since I was bitten by a relative's dachshund when I was a toddler (I still have the scar to prove it) I have been far from a dog fan.

But Matt boldly went ahead and I was fine. The Labrador (Jet) is actually rather lovely (I even rubbed her tummy when she asked) and the Jack Russell (Meg), although usually rather too energetic for my liking, stayed in her basket until Lucy came home - and then started charging around the house.

Our plans for this morning had to be altered. Subsequent to lots of late night chat we had a lovely lie in. The lie-in is one of those luxuries that I seem only to be able to indulge in when away from home.

Anyway, once we had finally emerged into the world we made our way into Wotton-under-Edge. The boys split off to watch the rugby while Lucy and I tackled the shops. Wotton-under-Edge is blessed with some of the finest charity shops. Last time I was here I got a complete 1968 dinner service, in its original box, for £25. Today I got an unused (still in its original cellophane) murder mystery game for £4. I also got some rather lovely things from the local shops to adorn my garden with. And a fishing net.

After lunch and a nap (the lie-in didn't make up for all the late night chatting) we went up to The Farm. Here I had to contend with more canine shenanigans as we were joined by 2 more black Labradors for a walk around the flora and fauna. Tessa and Pip are younger and more boisterous than Jet. Add Meg into the equation and I spent much of the walk fearing that I would be knocked off my feet into the slurry, or mauled horribly by one of these hounds.

I found looking at the calves much more pleasing, they had a nice lick of me but I drew the line at letting them suck on my fingers.

Getting friendly with some calves

We met the steers (boy cows who've had their bits chopped off) who didn't know the fate that will soon befall them on behalf of a higher end supermarket. And the steers who go to the slightly less high end applications.

Our tour of the resident bovines finished with a walk through a field of dairy cattle, during which I was only momentarily scared when it looked like the Jack Russell was going to take one on. Fortunately she thought better of it and our walk continued uneventfully into a field of wheat. This was slightly scarier as the dogs could not easily be spotted amongst the crops so I couldn't be sure from which angle they might try to get me.

Shantag (the brown eyed side)

But I emerged unscathed and we moved on to be introduced to the horse that Lucy is probably going to buy (she bought the horse box yesterday, hence our slightly challenging entry into the house). Shantag is a rather unusual looking horse with one blue eye and one brown. I'm not a horse fan really but was feeling braver with my animal encounters now and enjoyed giving Shantag a stroke on the nose. I would have fed her a sugar cube but didn't have any.