She is now an expectant mum, due to lamb in April.

11 – Joined friends today for a lovely 10-mile circular walk from Hepburn Woods near Chillingham.

Climbed Ros Castle, 1033ft, a local landmark and viewpoint complete with an Iron Age settlement. On a clear day, which it wasn’t for us, you can supposedly see seven castles – Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh, Lindisfarne and Chillingham but you’d probably need binoculars to take in Alnwick, Ford and Warkworth.

Finding our next destination, Caterans Hole or Cave, took some careful searching amongst the heather and bracken on Cateran Hill. Great excitement when we found the steps going down into a narrow underground fissure in the sandstone rock. It once had a door but that’s now gone.

The passageway extends about 40 yards and is very dark although names and dates carved into the rock were discernible with head torches. Reputedly an ice house for Chillingham Castle, several miles away, (what a wearisome task that must have been, getting the ice to the castle with a horse and cart) local legend links the cave to smugglers and freebooters – their loot would be well hidden in this isolated spot. On to Blawearie, a remote shepherd’s house on the moors, last occupied in the 1940s and now just an imposing ruin.

Blawearie	A reconstructed Bronze Age cairn

Two ravens put in an unexpected appearance as we ate our lunch. From the top of Hepburn Moor, we got a surprise sighting, through binoculars, of the Chillingham Wild White Cattle in the parkland below. Herd numbers hover around the 60 mark and the park has been their home for seven centuries. The only way to see the cattle at close quarters is by joining one of the pre-arranged tours with the warden.

15 – Interesting talk in the village hall tonight about Admiral Lord Collingwood, Nelson’s right hand man at the Battle of Trafalgar and, many would say the real hero of the day. A Northumberland gentleman, he lived in Morpeth, and also planted the famous Collingwood oak trees in the College Valley. A commemorative stone was unveiled there on Trafalgar Day last October 2005 alongside a newly planted oak wood. 

17 – Gathered the Wether Hill for scanning on Monday. A buzzard was particularly curious and hovered overhead, unperturbed by me or the dogs.

18 – Jim bringing the Glitters ewes down off the hill at 7.45a.m. A fabulous cold, crispy morning.

20 – The scan today showed fewer ewes expecting twins but we were pleased nevertheless. Jim Sinton, the scan man, is sitting in front of the monitor.

The ewes pass through a crate on his right and he runs the scanner under their tummies. An image appears on the screen and Jim can tell how many lambs the ewe is expecting or whether she is geld. Afterwards the ewes were run through the sheep pens and dosed with a drench to kill any liver fluke (which sheep can pick up from wet ground) and then sprayed down their backs with an insecticide to ward off ticks.

We had some welcome extra help from Terry Moreland and two of his sons, Richard and Robert. The family have stayed at Shepherd’s Cottage every year since 1992 and always come at Easter to help with the lambing.

Richard counts 14 ewes into the pen

lifts the gate to allow them to run up the shedder into another pen...........

..........where  Ross doses them

23 – First frogspawn and frogs at Tadpole Corner. Ross took buckets of hi-energy feed licks to various places on both hills. The sheep are quick to smell the sugary molasses and several soon gather round the buckets.

25 – In a new marketing venture we have sold hill lambs direct to T.R. Johnson, a local butcher’s shop in Wooler, and also to the Tree House in Alnwick Garden. Our Cheviot and Blackface lambs are born on the hill and move in-bye at weaning time in September. Slower to mature than the cross bred lambs we have been particularly impressed with their flavour and fine texture. Richard Sim, executive chef at the Garden, is also impressed and rang today to ask for more.