A SOUTH Lakeland woman has spoken of her frustration at being ignored after she told a woman to stop harassing a sheep in the Lake District.
Nicola Bolton spoke to the woman after encountering her trying to have a photo taken with the animal near the Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel in the Langdale valley.
Miss Bolton said: “She stopped and looked at me, completely horrified, and she said: ‘I’m not doing anything wrong’.”
The animal was, says Miss Bolton, on top of a wall, on the other side of which was a considerable drop.
It was therefore unable to escape the attentions of the tourist on the one side by clambering down the other.
The woman was trying to get her partner to take a photo of her with the sheep and was ‘right in its face’.
Miss Bolton said the animal was making lots of noise and was visibly distressed.
After asking the woman to stop, Miss Bolton says she was told: “That’s what they are there for, to have their photo taken.”
The woman carried on and completely ignored her.
Miss Bolton, 33, of Troutbeck, is the founder of The Lakes Plastic Collective, a community organisation through which she shares her litter-picking exploits with the public and encourages others to follow her example and treat the countryside with respect.
She finds incidents such as Wednesday’s involving the sheep on the wall ‘frustrating’.
“It’s disappointing that people are coming to the countryside but don’t know how to behave still,” she said.
“If you are going somewhere new, you should respect the area you’re going to and the livelihoods of the people that live and work here.”
She warned that sheep worrying could make the animals ill and, in cases involving pregnant ewes, cause them to miscarry.
In April of this year, a family cornered a pregnant ewe belonging to Harry Place Farm, also in the Langdale valley, to take ‘selfies’ with it.
A farmer remonstrated with them but, like the couple near the Old Dungeon Ghyll, they were unable to see that they had done anything wrong.
Miss Bolton feels that ‘more education and more enforcement’ is needed to discourage irresponsible behaviour.
“They need to start making examples out of people really,” she said.
“You see parking fines, and that’s it.
“What about people that are cutting down trees for campfires?
“What about people that are camping on land that isn’t theirs?”
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