A Second Day in the Life of a Herder on Tour

It’s a couple of days since I wrote my last blog and I’m on a roll, so here’s another. We’ve travelled back to South Wales from Cornwall, and there’s another event to be done.

7.45am: Once I again I greet my alarm clock with despair, and consider whether I would be better suited to a job working nights somewhere. The first few minutes of my day are not improved when I remember that I arrived back to Wales yesterday sans toothbrush, which is languishing in Cornwall. Andi (infinitely quicker than me in the morning to cope with life) nips out to the shed to give the reindeer a small breakfast, but they are deeply unimpressed that she doesn’t give them any lichen – that can wait until we get to our event.

reindeer-chasing-hen
Exercising the reindeer in the field yesterday afternoon

8.20am: There’s no time this morning to take the reindeer out into the field to stretch their legs, but being as they had a good blast when we got back to the farm yesterday afternoon, we’re not too worried that they’ll be too full of bounce. We collect up their feed bowls, load them up and off we go, bang on schedule at 8.45am.

A beautiful setting for our welsh farm base
A beautiful setting for our welsh farm base

We’re staying on a farm near Cwmbran, and Andi and I know it well having been here every winter for years on end. Being in rural Wales, that therefore means winding lanes and big hedges, and the first 3 miles of any journey is a narrow gauntlet to be run before we emerge on to a dual carriageway. We always play the ‘gauntlet game’ here – guessing how many cars we’ll meet – and I thrash Andi soundly this morning. What can I say – we have to make our own fun on tour…

9.55am: Today’s event is in a wee town in South Wales, and is a favourite of mine, being very well run. It’s our most ‘standard’ type of event, with a quiet set up area away from the crowds, then the parade and finally a couple of hours in a display pen before we pack up and head away. We head to the pen first to drop off our signs, feed bowls, water and leaflet box, and then make our way another half kilometre along the road to our set-up area.

10.30am: Having set up our tether rope for the reindeer so they can come out of the lorry and have a second (small!) breakfast before the parade, Andi climbs through the partition in the lorry into the reindeer area to put on their halters. A couple of minutes later there is a muffled squeak, as Paintpot has shaken his head unexpectedly and clouted Andi really hard across the face. She sticks her head back out through the partition for me to check there’s no blood (i.e. hers, not Paintpot’s!), and then emerges, reindeer in tow, with a visible bump and bruise on her forehead – an occupational hazard of the job. Paintpot appears to be smirking. We potter around the field a couple of times, letting the reindeer stretch their legs a bit, before attaching them to their tether and giving them a pile of food each.

11.30am: Reindeer are fed and happy, the event organizers are faffing with the sleigh, cable ties and a tiny camera with which to film the parade (how long can it take to attach a 3 inch camera?!), and we’re about to start harnessing up. We’ve had to had a quick experiment with Tanner to check we can actually do the harness up around his fat belly – Tilly’s obviously been feeding him too much at the farm – but unfortunately for Tanner we managed, so it’s his turn to pull the sleigh today, along with Sooty.

12 noon: We are good to go. The best thing about this event is its organization – it’s a huge parade of which we’re only a small part, but whereas most events are slightly spoiled visually by a sea of security people wearing hi-viz jackets, this town comes up trumps. There are apparently 50 police here today on duty, but almost all of them are dressed as elves! Looks-wise they are in keeping with the parade, and everything runs very smoothly with no problems – after all, who messes with a 6ft elf?

Sooty and Tanner flanked by their giant security elves!
Sooty and Tanner flanked by their giant security elves!

12.15pm: There’s been a brief delay as everybody in the parade is organized and set off in the right order, with a disagreement about where the St Bernard dogs pulling carts (oh yes) should go. NOT right in front of the reindeer is the answer! The band should have been at the front but were all in the toilet at the wrong moment, so have to be slotted in further down the line… We are the back markers as usual, and once we’re over the speed bump then Santa gets in and off we go. Our sleigh has very low ground clearance (it only flies on Christmas Eve) so grounds at the slightest opportunity, leading to us frequently kicking Santa out while we heft it over a speed bump or kerb.

Our team of reindeer behave impeccably, with Andi and I feeling slightly surplus to requirements at times, particularly so Andi at the back of the sleigh. She might as well have gone for a coffee instead to be honest, being as Paintpot, Minute, Nazca and Olmec plod along with no guidance needed at all. At the front I am barely needed either, with Sooty and Tanner being total pros. As one of the elves comments, we should be concerned for our jobs! My main task in the entire parade ends up being yelling at a helium balloon seller, marching right towards Tanner with an enormous bunch of balloons. Tanner’s eyes pop out on stalks, but the rogue bunch of balloons with legs is accosted by a police elf, who quickly sends her packing in the opposite direction.

1.10pm: After possibly the slowest, but most relaxed, parade I’ve ever done, we finally arrive in the pen. Andi unattaches the reindeer from the sleigh as quickly as possible, and the crowd has a good laugh at Nazca, who has clocked the food bowls hidden in the corner of the pen instantly. He beats us to them, and then batters us continuously with his antler twiglets as we try to space the bowls out around the pen. Toerag.

And then… I hear a chorus of gasps, and exclamations of horror. Everyone is pointing in alarm towards Minute, who 10 seconds ago had two antlers, and now only has one… Oh dear. I grab the offending antler out of his bowl where it has fallen, and head to the side of the pen to make my way around, explaining to everyone that this is completely natural at this time of year and that poor Minute has not been maimed for life! A cast antler is a very useful prop in a pen, as everyone’s natural instinct is to lean over the barriers and touch the furry velvet antlers. When still attached to the reindeer this is a strict no-no, but once one has fallen off then suddenly a new opportunity arises, and lots of hands reach out eagerly to feel the soft velvet. I do laps of the pen continuously with the antler until Andi takes over, and I head off to retrieve the lorry from the set-up, filing away a mental note of the location of a brownie stall en route. Gotta keep my priorities straight…

Antler disaster for Minute! Photo by @HortopHortop via Twitter
Antler disaster for Minute! Photo courtesy of @HortopHortop via Twitter

3pm: After the exceptionally long parade and the huge crowds around the pen (roughly 15,000 people attended today’s event), the afternoon has flown by, and we’ve just finished packing up. Thankfully it’s been dry which is always nicer anyway, as nothing is worse than packing soaked straw (rain and reindeer pee) into giant plastic bags with frozen bare hands… If any of you ever catch me at that point and choose then to tell me I’ve the best job in the UK – I may argue. But today it’s dry and I’m warm (fleece lined trousers!) so all is good with the World.

15167480_1210877905657280_5916292177652720813_o
Snoozing Olmec! © John Lewis via Facebook

After a hasty gallop into Tesco on a toothbrush related mission, Team Handi are ready to go. The reindeer will be tired after a busy day and deserve to get back to base as soon as possible, so we do our best to oblige. Andi wins the gauntlet game this time.

sun-reindeer
Dramatic backlit reindeer! 

4.50pm: Reindeer are back in their barn, the animal movement license paperwork for the day is finished, we are back in our cottage and another day is done. We’ve checked in briefly with Fiona to let her know that all has gone well, and written our ‘event report’. This details carefully all relevant info from the day, including the travel times taken, details of the pen (was it big enough etc), set-up area and behaviour of the reindeer, plus anything that needs addressing for future years. At the bottom of the sheet is the most important bit though – the Santa rating. Today’s Santa has garnered himself a big fat shiny 10, based on: good banter, own beard (bonus point), glittery boots and the fact that he didn’t instantly address all the reindeer as ‘Dasher’ or ‘Dancer’. A Santa rating of 10 is not too common, or at least not from the pen of Team Handi, so good work that man!

Now, to finally brush my teeth…

Hen

A Day in The Life of a Herder on Tour

I thought I’d enlighten readers of a typical day in the life of a reindeer herder on tour.

7.30am: Anyone who knows me will know that I am terrible in the mornings, so my alarm clock is greeted with the usual feeling of utter horror, quickly followed by extreme distress. Fiona (my manager at Reindeer House) will testify that this can last till lunchtime sometimes.

Andi and I (collectively known as team Handi) are on tour with our reindeer once again and are currently right down in Cornwall. This is the furthest afield that we travel and are away from home for 2.5 weeks, the longest time we ever take reindeer on tour for. Home from home just now is a farm near St Austell, when both us and the reindeer have accommodation – but we’ve stayed on two other farms en route down here, and have had several days with no events, so by no means have we travelled all this way in one go.

boys-barn-cornwall
Morning boys!

8am: Our event today doesn’t start till late afternoon, so it’s a fairly relaxed start for us. First priority is to check the reindeer, who are all still lying down dozing when we reach them. On this farm they have a lovely large barn with a deep straw bed, and it’s a particularly nice building for them as it is very well ventilated and they can see out at every angle. They also have some very close neighbours here, in the form of several groups of cattle, all of whom couldn’t quite believe their eyes when we led the reindeer into their shed on arrival yesterday!

Paintpot ignoring his inquisitive neighbours
Paintpot ignoring his inquisitive neighbours

Before we feed the reindeer their breakfast, we pop their halters on and lead them out in to a neighbouring field to stretch their legs. There’s a brief bit of galloping about and ‘dancing’ (the reindeer equivalent of a horse bucking), but they soon knuckle down to the more important business of grazing. Grass is far too rich for a reindeer’s diet for them to exist purely on it, but a short spell in a field does them no harm and they enjoy it immensely. Andi and I have the usual team of 6 reindeer with us – 4 castrated males (‘Christmas reindeer’) and two 6-month-old calves. Our team this time consists of Paintpot, Tanner, Sooty, Minute, Nazca and Olmec, and having been away from home for 8 days now, we have got the measure of them all, knowing all their little quirks and the exact pecking order between them.

cornwall-field-3
Olmec, Nazca and Sooty following us round the fields

They look so relaxed out in the field that we prepare their breakfasts in the barn, but decide to have our own breakfast before bringing them in. It’s a nice secure field so there’s no worries about them deciding to explore the Cornish countryside on their own.

9am: We bring the reindeer in, but as this team are so relaxed, experiment with a laid-back method i.e. we don’t bother putting leadropes on the calves (we are nowhere near a road). They potter along – just the ticket – if only all teams were quite this easy to lead about! They dive into their breakfast bowls with enthusiasm and we leave them to it.

Leading the whole team back to the barn
Leading the whole team back to the barn

Team Handi head inside – at this time of year Reindeer House is in the grip of Christmas chaos, and the staff left at home fight to keep their heads above water amidst (among many other jobs) the adoption packs that require making up in time for Christmas presents. As such, Imogen has emailed us through a list of letters that need writing, and Andi and I just happen to be equipped with headed paper, envelopes and stamps. Fancy that.

2pm: We’ve had a couple of hours off chilling out, but lunch has been had and there’s work to be done. We’re off to a Cornish seaside town today, about an hour’s drive away. We load up the reindeer, and off we go!

3.30pm: We arrive on schedule, and are greeted by the organisers of the event. Our pen is outside a hotel on a grassy area, and there’s a brief delay while they frantically locate some more barriers, the number needed having been lost in translation. This is why we always arrive with plenty of time to spare! I move the lorry around the back of the hotel into its car park, with one of the (male) staff taking it upon himself to ‘help’ me reverse. Have been driving a lorry for years, and have made it all the way here from northern Scotland – can probably just about manage this bit myself, thank you very much…

4pm: The reindeer are on public display before the parade today, so we get them settled into their pen with feed and water, and pop up our info signs. I wangle a couple of cups of tea too, essential for reindeer herders on tour. Well me anyway – Andi’s day was ruined earlier by a coffee machine producing a cup of hot milk without a hint of caffeine to be found. Disaster.

Delighted people looking at the reindeer
Delighted people looking at the reindeer

With a couple of hours to go before the parade Andi goes off to decorate the sleigh, while I man the fort in the pen, chatting to people and handing out leaflets. The reindeer still have their furry noses in their bowls and ignore the fairly large crowd, particularly, it seems to me, all the people hanging over the barriers calling out ‘Rudolph!’…

6.10pm: 20 minutes to go, so it’s time for us to start harnessing. Minute and Paintpot are the chosen sleigh pullers today, so they wear the bigger harnesses, while the ‘back reindeer’ wear smaller body belts and bells. We get a bucket of lichen to keep Olmec, who is the shyer of the two calves, busy while we put his harness on, but it just results in a mugging from the bolder Nazca – who has earned the reputation of ‘small and annoying’ in the last few days! Olmec stands quietly watching the antics of his buddy…

6.20pm: T-minus-10 minutes, so it’s time to put the reindeer ‘into trace’ (attach them to the sleigh). Andi is leading the reindeer at the front today, so it’s my job to clip the various straps to the right places, and make sure everything is correctly connected. Not helped halfway through by having to retrieve Nazca from the other side of the pen, complete with a wreath and set of bells on his head that he’s collected from the front of the sleigh. ‘Small and very annoying’ today, but it gives the crowd a good laugh! I attach his leadrope to the back of the sleigh, and hope he behaves himself. He doesn’t.

Minute and Paintpot all set for the parade
Minute and Paintpot all set for the parade

6.40pm: After a slightly late start (not our fault), we are off! The boys excel themselves to say the least, and are proper pros, ambling along steadily. Nazca even manages to keep his wee antlers to himself for a little while, rather than poking them where they don’t belong: into the decorations, another reindeer, the leadropes, parts of my anatomy. It’s a fairly short parade, so we’re finished by 7pm. Work done for the day, we unharness the boys (while the organisers and hotel staff all take selfies with Nazca!) and repack everything into the lorry.

7.25pm: The reindeer are loaded up, and we set off. A brief stop for fuel, and a short detour in the wrong direction at a roundabout, but we’re back at the farm by 8.30pm. The reindeer are unloaded back into their barn, the cows looking on, and as soon as I pick up the feed bag there’s a chorus of moos, just in case it’s for them. The reindeer are utterly unperturbed.

9pm: Boom! Job done! Dinner is in the oven and pyjamas are on. At this time of year they are the only item of my clothing without a background aroma of reindeer pee. And people think travelling all over Britain on tour with reindeer must be glamorous…

Hen

Life on Tour

‘Christmas’ for us reindeer herders, doesn’t just mean Dec 25th, but rather the entire period of November and December. After 7-8 weeks of (organised) chaos, hectic days and usually less than desirable weather, Christmas Day itself always seems a rather incidental event at the end of it all! While tour is frequently great fun, it is also extremely tiring and by the end we’re all ready to heave a huge sigh of relief and pack away everything for another 10 months. Come January, should one more person jokingly ask a herder which one Rudolph is, then so help them God…

Topi has a quick nap on my shoulder whilst waiting for the parade to start
Topi has a quick nap on my shoulder whilst waiting for the parade to start

While up to eight teams of reindeer are away on the weekends in November and December, the weekdays are quieter, and most teams return home. We have around 45 big male castrate reindeer who are trained to harness, four of which will travel to each event along with two 6 to 7 month old calves, making teams of six. So even on the busiest weekends there are still reindeer at home taking their turn to ‘hold the fort’, and no single reindeer will go out to events week upon week. Many teams go out only for a night or two at the weekend, returning home straight away afterwards, while a few head away for longer but 2.5 weeks at a time is always the longest stint we ever do with the same six reindeer.

Spider looking incredibly relaxed at an event

Obviously, being based in the Cairngorms means that most trips away on tour for a ‘long stint’ start with the long haul down the A9 and onward, so a network of ‘bases’ across the UK to keep our travelling time down is a necessity. Our two main big bases are in the Lake District and South Wales, but we also have three in the central and southern Scotland, plus another five or so in England. Most are farms, so the reindeer are housed in a large, airy barn or undercover yard while we herders have accommodation on site too, usually in the form of a self-catering cottage. This then enables us to travel much shorter distances to our events, and (like us!) reindeer require days off while on tour, so the bases provide safe and secure locations for them then.

Origami, Duke, Hamish, Tanner, Aonach and Fyrish chilling out at our Welsh base
Origami, Duke, Hamish, Tanner, Aonach and Fyrish chilling out at our Welsh base
We’ve been visiting some of our bases for years now, so our hosts are well used to their unusual winter guests!
We’ve been visiting some of our bases for years now, so our hosts are well used to their unusual winter guests!

Grass is far too rich for a reindeer’s diet, so while we let them get some grazing each day while exercising them, we don’t leave them on grass for too long at any one time. Our usual routine is to get up and to take the reindeer out for a stretch of the legs first thing. At some bases this involves a run on halters, but at most we can let them loose in a field and they will hurtle around ‘dancing’ (reindeer don’t buck like excited horses, but will leap in the air, spin around and bounce about!). Then it’s back to the barn for their breakfast, while we poo-pick, refill water bowls and sort the lorry ready for the next event. Then it’s breakfast time for us!

Run1
Hamish, Origami, Aonach, Duke and Fyrish (plus Tanner) burst out from the barn, down the field…
Run2
… and away up the next one!
Run3
It’s always reassuring when they come back! We pop their head collars on whilst out exercising in case anyone decides to adventure a little too far, but for the rest of the time at base we take them off.
Run4
After a few minutes thundering around letting off steam, they like to settle down to graze and potter.
Run5
Stalking whichever one of us has the bucket of lichen is their favourite pastime

Aside from looking after the reindeer, base days can go one of two ways, depending on your team partner is. Should it be Mel or Sally (among others) then it might become what has become known as ‘boot-camp’ – an energetic day of walking or cycling. For the lazier or less fit amongst us (primarily pointing the finger at myself here), a day of pottering around local towns, drinking coffee and sight-seeing seems more appealing! We do however, have to help out Reindeer House on occasion, who will sometimes send us lists of letters to write to go into adoption packs – Christmas is a hectic time for those left behind at base.

AdoptLetters
Lotti, Hen and Abby on letter writing duty!

And then there are the events. They range from shopping centres to light switch-ons, town centre parades to private functions, and are a way of raising the money needed for the reindeer to continue their free-ranging lifestyle on the Cairngorms. Reindeer are a herd animal, hence why we never take less than four out together (usually six), and as they all go out to events as calves then they are very relaxed when we take them out and about again as full-grown adults, as they’ve seen it all before. They are great fun on tour and we always return home with endless stories from each event: how each reindeer behaved when pulling the sleigh, who fell asleep into their feed bowl, who kept trying to eat the tinsel on the sleigh, and who tried to eat nick a box of Celebrations from the Queen’s head groom at Windsor (stand up and take a bow, Fergus…).

FergusWindsor
Fergus… never a dull moment…

Hen

Book Now