This weekend seven beautiful belted galloways turned up in the fields around Deer Path Cottage. to spend the winter, with 13 more on the way. The seven just arrived are Fi’s girls that have been doing a fantastic job grazing out on the heath she managages for Surrey Wildlife Trust. But it was time to take them off and happily an arrangement has been struck with the landowner here, and much needed grazing returns to the valley. The fields the girls were to use were fenced round with an electric fence earlier in the week and happy to say the SWT Grazing Team even circled round the hedge we (The PTES Hedgerows for Dormice volunteers (www.ptes.org/hedgerows)) managed last year.
Fi, Shep and I went out to check the girls this morning and they were happily laid up in one of the higher field near “The Ancestors Path”. There are two red-brown and five black cows, all with varying patterns of ‘belt’ which has given them a sense of individuality so that Fi and her volunteers gave them all names- Bella, Erica, Betty, Doris, Agnes, Molly and Bertha. We’ll be keeping an eye on them -“Lookering”- for the rest of the winter.
James T Jones 
