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My trip to Scotand and Wales

December 2009

I flew into Manchester England on November 27th and picked up my little rental car, a Vauxhall coup. I brought two crates with me and was able to fit them into the backseat of the car in the collapsed position.

My first stop was the city of Chester on my way to my B&B in Meardy, Wales.  Chester was a nice introduction to the United Kingdom. The trip gave me a chance to get my head around driving on the left side of the road. After a fairly easy trip down the interstate (motorway in the UK) I got to practice parallel parking while looking over the "other" shoulder and a little urban driving. The center of Chester was closed to traffic and full of great little shops, a wonderful cathedral and a Barclays Bank, which changed a chunk of my money for what turned out to be the best exchange rate I saw for the whole three weeks.

Driving in Wales requires cool nerves and a steady hand. The roadways are narrower then the U.S. norm, there are no breakdown lanes and much of the roads have either stonewalls or hedges immediately next to the travel lanes. There is plenty of room for the cars but to someone accustomed to the wide-open spaces of American highways it felt extremely claustrophobic. It was more than worth the effort, however, as the scenery was tremendous. It looked like what New England could be if only we had as many sheep eating all the trees.

I had brought my Garmin to which I had downloaded the UK maps from the Internet. It proved to be occasionally brilliant and generally a bit lame. It could find places very cleverly if I had the postal codes. I found in Wales though that it was unable to find many towns if all I had was the town name or the address. This was the case with the first night's B&B. Happily my hosts had given me great directions and I found the place quite easily. It was well off the main road through several sheep fields and a couple of gates. The house was stone and timber frame, very scenic. My hostess had a pot of hot tea and homemade cakes waiting for me. By the time I was unpacked in my beautiful room she had made me a dinner of steak pie and vegetables. The right B&B is way better than home.

Saturday was a wet, cold morning but happily the North Wales Final didn't start until 9:00 so plenty of time to enjoy breakfast and get to the trial field.  Needless to say I got lost on my way. Wales is a warren of small roads and anyone who has traveled with me knows I am seriously directionally-challenged. I spent the whole trip pretty much lost interspersed with miraculous arrivals at my destinations. This was no exception. I drove in the wrong direction for about 20 minutes and then by a miracle arrived at the trial field. All trial fields look alike. There were a bunch of trucks, albeit smaller then the American one-ton norm, parked in a muddy field. I didn't dare take the rental car in there so parked on the verge and walked into the trial. 

As a result of my tour of North Wales I had missed the first dog but arrived for the second run. A bit of asking and wandering located Sue Main with whom I had emailed and met when she was in the US judging for Carol Campion. Sue was in a truck with the winner of the 2009 Welsh National, Gwyn Jones, and Wyn Edwards. I spent the day watching the trial with them and exchanges observations with Gwyn who was charming and kind. I saw several dogs I quite liked including a bitch Wyn was running but nothing that was for sale. I made several contacts though through the help of my new friends and made arrangements to look at a few dogs on Monday.

At the end of the trial I was glad to return to my warm B&B for a hot supper and bath.My friend Alasdair MacRae had put me in touch with Andy Carnegie in Scotland before my departure and Andy promised to look around for me in Scotland and told me to call him upon my arrival in the UK. I called him Saturday night to see if he had had any luck on my behalf. He reported that he had found a couple of dogs for me to see and I should come to his farm in Scotland. He invited me to stay with him and go see these prospects. It sounded like too good a chance to see Scotland to pass up so I promised to be there on Tuesday.

I spent Monday and Tuesday morning visiting several farms. Everyone was very generous with their time and knowledge showing dogs and youngsters and farms and entertaining me with tea and information. The sun even came out for a few minutes. I saw several young dogs: two three year old males, a three year old female and a nursery male. I didn't see anything that I got really excited about. I had come on the trip hoping to find a female nursery dog that had had considerable practical experience as well as being trained up well enough to run in trials. Since I compete frequently out West I was looking for a girl with a lot of courage and scope. The fields in Wales were all fairly small, although there were certainly farms with big hills. I didn't get to see any dogs covering big ground and I didn't see any nursery bitches that looked like the dog of my dreams.

The drive to Scotland was about 6 hours but it was motorway almost the whole trip so not too taxing. The gasoline is certainly more expensive than in the States, but since I'm accustomed to filling a 10mpg diesel truck every 4-5 hours I didn't find much shock at the gas stations. My car got really good mileage and it cost about 40 Pounds for a fill-up and I needed to fill-up much less often than with the truck. So yeah its expensive but not as bad as hauling my trailer to California.

I got to Andy's farm after dark but again I had really great directions and didn't even get lost. Andy and his wife opened their house to me and put me up for my whole stay in Scotland. Andy took time off from his busy farm to drive about with me looking at dogs and spent considerable time calling around to find likely prospects for us to look at. When I look back on this trip, after I have forgotten all of the great scenery and wonderful sights it’s the kindness and generosity of Andy I will remember.

I got a chance to see Andy's dogs in the morning including the famous Lark who came as close to winning the International as a dog can. Andy had two very nice bitches but had already sold them both before I called, alas. As Andy had plans to go to Ireland during the week I went off sightseeing. I drove to the south of Scotland and saw a young bitch, not quite as finished as I had hoped, and then off to the highlands and Edinburgh. More nice B&Bs and a few less impressive Inns, some great castles and many tourist shops and I was back at Andy's for the weekend.

Saturday Andy was busy on the farm and I went to see a 3 year-old-bitch belonging to a friend of his. Andy had originally bought the bitch in Ireland for himself but she never would work for Andy so he ended up selling her to a shepherd where she had worked for the past year. She (Fly) had run in the Irish Nursery trials and then spent a year working the hill doing all the jobs a good hill dog needs to perform. Sounded perfect. When I actually saw her she was not stopping well but she also didn't ever do anything wrong. She was a bit tight on her flanks but never excessively so. She showed tons of calm courage moving up on sheep in a corner. All and all she looked like a girl who had been doing a lot of work and was not tuned up for trials. As I had several other dogs to see I said, "thank you, I'll let you know" and filed her under Possibly.

Saturday and Sunday Andy and I put another 800 miles on my car and saw a dog and a bitch, both exactly what I had in mind. The bitch had been run in three trials in her nursery league and won all three. She, Nel, had been working on the hill for the man who trained her for a year. When he showed her to me she was perfect. I knew I had to have her by the time she had finished fetching sheep to his feet. She had a nice little sideways flank where she sort of cross stepped in front never taking her front from the sheep as she did a half flank that was very pretty. Her shedding was very nice, although she didn't know how to single, apparently not a requirement in Scotland where there are plenty of sheep to shed instead of single. While her trainer had his back to her explaining her virtues to us she brought the sheep up out of a long draw corrected her line and pushed them on with a lovely, calm, no nonsense manner. I was in love. So my first dog was purchased subject to an eye examine & we drove back to Andy's. On the drive back I mulled over the performance of Fly on Saturday morning and decided I was unlikely to see anything nicer than her pushing sheep into the muddy corner of a stonewall and called her owner upon our arrival at Andy's to spend the last of my money.

            FLY trying to make a good first impression

I picked up Fly the next morning and headed off for more sightseeing while I waited for Nel's eye test. I went back up into the highlands, drove to Glen Coe and the Isle of Skye, saw Stirling Castle and a lot of snow and mountains -- all of it beautiful and cold.

        NEL looking like she was worth every penny of it.

Happily Nel's eyes were fine and I picked her up on Friday night miraculously finding the farm again in the dark. Since it was at the end of a very long lane I was very concerned I might have the wrong place. Luck was with me and I drove off with my two girls all over my muddy rental car.

Early morning mist over England from Hadrian’s Wall

I had a week and half left on my tour before my return flight and with two dogs my travel options were somewhat limited. I got to Hadrian's Wall, a sight on my top ten list, and did some hiking around the Lake District. I drove down to Chirk and saw the Welsh Nursery Final. Happily I didn't see anything I liked better than my two girls (and was careful that I didn't second guess my choices). At the Final I joined up with Sue and Gwyn again. Sue invited me to her farm on Tuesday to try the two girls out and show them to Gwyn.

                        Welsh Nursery Final Field

Sunday and Monday I went to Conwy on the west coast of north Wales. Stayed at another great B&B and saw more castles. After hiking in the Snowdonian National Park, one of the few activities available to me and two dogs, I toured a slate mine and tried to spend as little of my dwindled English currency as possible. 

             Town of Conwy from the castle rampart

Tuesday at Sue's, Fly went right to work for me. We had no agreement on whistles but she was able to understand my English quite well. When one of the sheep faced up to her, she very matter of factly backed it about 30 feet up the field until I called her off. I was very well pleased. Nel was much less keen about working for me. She finally consented to work the sheep a bit but was much too tentative in her willingness to work to tell us much. We all went into Sue's for lunch much impressed with Fly and my good luck.

                     Hiking in Snowdonian area

That night I stayed at a very expensive hotel near the airport and worried all night my car full of dogs would be stolen. Happily we were all reunited in the morning and began our 14-hour odyssey back to the states. Very long day began with my waiting an hour until a person could be found to test my kennels for explosives.

We are all home now. I have been working the girls everyday. It took Nel about three weeks to really begin working for me and I don't think she is fully there yet. It’s very exciting as each day the girls commit more and more to me and show me more and more of their ability. I'm very excited about them both. Nel is as she first appeared -- quite refined and clean in all of her moves, lovely flanks and a great stop. Fly is definitely a rougher sort of dog. Her flanks are not open enough and stopping her on the fetch looks like a long-term project. However, she brings a beautiful well-reasoned pressure to the sheep and deals with any insubordination with the sort of casual aplomb I haven't seen in a long time. I can hardly wait to try them out at the Spring Trials.