Safe passage

I used to be scared of bullocks. This was based on several dodgy experiences. Like being chased by about 25 of them, suddenly and unexpectedly, only making it over a gate by the skin of my teeth. Having to lift someone quickly over a barbed wire fence when another lot came thundering toward us.

Then last year I was out with my daughter and a large mob of cattle saw us coming down a track and gathered around the gate we wanted to go through. We hung around, nervously, before I tried clearing a way through them. But they started pushing at me with their big noses and at one point I thought they were going to knock me down and trample me.

The farmer spotted what was going on and came to our aid. He just walked among them, talking kindly and patting them. They just turned away and dispersed.

These days I talk to cattle like that farmer did. I walk through them confidently and once they realise you've not come to feed them they rapidly lose interest and saunter off.

Postscript: this is probably not a tactic I'd employ in mid-Wales, where the scary incidents took place. The cattle are different there, I suspect because there seem to be hardly any walkers. It's not unusual to find a powerhouse of a Bull hanging around on a public footpath there. The kind that weighs in at a couple of tonnes, with muscles on its muscles and steam snorting out of its nostrils. I don't mess with those.