Special delivery for Bibury's Rack Isle!

Dense vegetation on Rack Isle, Arlington Row end

Delivery of 9 new visitors for Rack Isle

Last sight of Belted Galloways as they disappeared into the dense vegetation

Ted in the dog house?

Another hot day at Sherborne today or as it turned out at Bibury's Rack Isle. With Mike and the 4x4 'sick' I joined James in Pat's Ford Ranger as we set off for Bibury. Today delivery of 9 Belted Galloways was due at Rack Isle for their 'holiday' from the Ebworth estate, an annual occurrence for the year old cattle stock. They normally stay on the Isle for 6-8 weeks where they manage to chew their way through the dense vegetation before returning to Ebworth.  Before the cattle were due to arrive James and I carried out some minor work on the electric fence James & Rob had erected earlier. At the same time a quick survey of the fence line and water trough {with manual pump to extract water from the adjacent river Coln} was carried out. As a bonus we found a slow worm under one of the corrugated sheets previously laid down as an attractive place for such reptiles. As usual Bibury was busy with the usual tourists and some of them were curious as to what we were doing. The 'lucky ones' were at hand when the delivery trailer arrived and provided some unexpected entertainment for them as the 9 Belted Galloways were introduced to their new but temporary home.  Within a few minutes all 9 had disappeared into the dense vegetation and I realised keeping a check on them during their visit was going to be no easy task!

Over 110,000 signatures for  'banning driven grouse shooting' reached and a good article in the guardian placing the 'shooting and hunting' communities communications in a more realistic context. So not all the media/press is led by the elitists who love the sport of killing animals whilst also harming the natural environment.

On a more bright note aren't we having a ball in Rio, makes you proud to be British although its a shame we soon won't be part of the EU.