The Drovers Return

Once, we had to take some cattle from Buslingthorpe to Barrow Haven. We taken to Buslingthorpe with our bikes and we drove the cattle from there to West Rasen and we left them there overnight. We then cycled back to Caistor and then had to cycle back to West Rasen in the morning to drive them to Oliver’s at Moortown, where they were again, left overnight. Once again, we cycled back to Caistor for the night, to return again in the morning to drive the cattle to Kirmington by the end of that day. Yet again we had to cycle home and then return to drive the cattle on to Barrow Haven. When we had done this we then had to cycle all the way back to Caistor again. The funny part of it was that when we got to the farm we had to put them into the crew yard for winter and the owner of the farm was looking after them. We said to him “You need to count them all to see they are all here”. He said “Oh I can’t do that”. We said “Why not? You’ll be in charge of them and you’ll have to count them in.” He said “I can’t. I can’t count or read or write!” So I just opened the gate and let them in and said “Well I don’t care whether there’s 60 or 59”.

On the way home we bike so far but it was cold so we decided to see if we could get a lift with a lorry or something. One of those low loaders came along and was being driven by a chap from Caistor. We stopped him and he said he’d give us a lift. We put our bikes on the back and we sat there with them all the way back to Caistor.

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