Brodgar takes Carnac and Stonehenge on their first trek

Those terrific young chaps Carnac and Stonehenge have just completed their first trek.

I’ve been mentoring the lads for a while now and spoke to our people about them.  We’re keen to get the young ‘uns out earning their feed as soon as they are ready.  The Two-Legs trust my opinion on this and could see how well training was going.  We took a few trial walks down the road, one reaching our neighbour’s house, another the farm around the corner, and finally touring the village.  The lads look to me to protect them.  Loud traffic doesn’t frighten me and if I don’t jump when a big car passes, why would they?  It works, this mentoring and I like having my little charges near me.

I declared Carnac and Stonehenge ready for work and I stepped out with them on a walk up to the Common.  Our good friends, experienced trekkers Elaine and Geoff were with us.  They are very kind and gentle and the boys responded well to gentle coaxing.  Leaving the farm is always the place where we question our people – is this a training trek, or a full trek? And so we might try to nibble the odd shoot as we leave.  This is a strict no-no.  Thankfully the boys didn’t show me up and we set off slowly down the hill, me in front with our male person and Geoff and Elaine behind with Carnac and Stonehenge.

It’s a long walk for little legs, but there was no complaining from the boys as we climbed the hill to the Common.  The Common is a bit of a naughty boys delight at the moment – there are plants shooting up to nibble-height absolutely everywhere.  Our person is a bit sharp on this matter and I don’t often manage to grab a mouthful.  The little ones were a bit in awe of the scale of the Common and didn’t think to try and eat.

We stopped for pictures, enjoyed some lovely early morning sun, saw the Exmoor ponies and took a gentle stroll.

Back at the farm, our people thanked me (gave me extra food) and we had a chat about the programme for Carnac and Stonehenge.  Like Ringsbury and Stenness, I’m going to start to take things a bit easier.  They rarely trek now, and by the end of the year I’ll be tailing my trekking off.  We have new, keen, gentle young trekkers on the farm and they will take out more guests from now on.

Last week the Egyptian King left.  He’s been the mate of our mothers for the last few years.  And my little chum Belas Knap and young Mulfra Quoit have gone off to join a herd of lovely llamas in Somerset.  We’ll see them again at the Newbury Show in September

More news from Golden Valley Llamas soon