A Gathering - 1

The Diary was privileged yesterday morning to be invited by Gillespie and Alayne Cameron to join in a gathering - not of the Highland clans, but of sheep from their Millburn croft in Ormsaigmore which had strayed almost as far as Portuairk (pictured).  The reason these usually extremely well-behaved Cheviots had been tempted towards such an outlandish place was April's moorland fire which swept from Portuairk southeastwards - Diary report here - leaving a burnt area which, despite appearances, is now producing some very sweet grazing.

While over thirty sheep were missing, Gillespie had already located most of them in the rough land to the north and west of Beinn na h-Imeilte, where they were visible from the Kilchoan-Portuairk road.  Their two main locations are marked as green circles on this map (courtesy Streetmap), along with the first part of the route used to drive them back to Millburn.

Stage one was to circle round to the north of the more northerly group, and drive them towards the second group, so we started, along with two of Alayne's dogs, from the Achosnich Old School House.  The sheep, being far more intelligent than most people give them credit for, saw us working our way behind them and became extremely wary, less of The Diary, whom they viewed with some puzzlement, than of Alayne and the dogs - picture shows Alayne with her two collies, at top right, moving to cut them off from Bealach Ruadh, the gap that leads through the hills to Achnaha.

Without the dogs, who are trained by Alayne, everything that followed would have been nigh on impossible.  Jess, to the left of this picture, was a pleasure to watch.  A two-year old border collie with one eye a brilliant blue, she was intelligent, responsive and inexhaustible - but didn't like The Diary's hat.  She finally persuaded the small flock....

....not to high-tail it to Achnaha but move down to the Old School House and then southeastwards.  From here on, Gillespie, who was in the van with the reserve dogs, was able to watch the sheep's movements and communicate with Alayne by radio.

The second group, from their vantage point high above us, saw us moving towards them and became restive, but we were able to chase them off the top of the ridge so they joined the first group.  While we now had twenty-seven of Millburn's missing sheep, three others were watching with interest from higher on the ridge - but we didn't have the energy to climb up and collect them, and they had no intention of coming down.

Part 2 follows....