The beginners guide to shearing in England and Wales……

A happy shearer.......A happy wool roller :-)...


The leader sheep looking over the flock... a pivotal roll.Just a wee one...

A two lane road... yeah right!!!



1. Tell all the locals that you are from New Zealand and they will give you shearing work assuming that all New Zealander's know how to work in the shearing shed whether this be the case or not (not in my case).
2. Tell all the locals that you are related to the ‘old kiwi guy and his daughter’ (Phillip and Emily) and they will be impressed (locals have a long memory).
Note: Telling even one local something means that it will spread through England like wild fire so be wary of what you tell them!
3. The night before the shearing job you will get a call from a mystery person at the other end of the phone telling you a specific time that they will come around to pick you up in the morning.
Note: If someone informs you of the farm that you will be shearing on please don’t take this as fact… by the next morning the job will have changed about three times…its an intricate and mysterious set up for arranging work.
4. Wake up the next morning and get ready for the prior arranged pick up time…wait…wait…wait and between half an hour and 4 hours later that someone will arrive.
5. Now you must drive up, down, through, across, over, under and along hundreds of country lanes with no sign posting and little to no view of where you are due to the tall thick hedging (called hedge rows) one either side of all lanes…. And finally (somehow) arrive at the farm where you are supposed to be.
Note: These lanes are very deceiving to the eye. What a regular kiwi would consider to be a one lane driveway is actually a two way road! When a car comes from the other direction both party’s simply drive into the thick hedges on either side of the lane… all very simple really!
Note No2: The drivers, knowing you are kiwis are very willing to point out local attractions by simply stating “back there was a castle, but you can’t see it because of that hedge.”
6. When you arrive at the farm the farmers will come up to you and introduce themselves and then state that “I guess I had better get in my sheep then.”
Note: Sheep are NEVER to be rounded up before the shearing gang arrives (God only knows why).
7. Farmers then proceed to try to convince their (lazy and useless) farm dogs (who don’t know a sheep from a lump of coal) to round up the sheep (and lambs and what ever else happens to be in the paddock) into to an orderly cue for them to be brought into the make shift pens. Eventually the farmer must give up on the dog and try to round them in himself, also with little success and so the shearing gang, farmer’s wife, child, cat, rat, and every other able (and not able) body alike must join in the chase. Finlay after a few hairy moments (when one or two of the sheep break rank and someone must spear tackle them into order) the sheep are contained!!!
8. Now is the time for everyone to set up. The shearers dump their shearing trailer down while the farmer uses old fences, plastic, tractors, children, and anything else that they see fit to create a race for the sheep to get from the pen into the shearing trailer.
Note: Do not at any stage suggest or even think of suggesting a ‘new and improved’ way of doing this. This technique has been perfected for over 100 years and is not about to be changed any time soon, just like the trailer tyres (on the trailer used at Dunkirk) that have not had new air in them since the early 1950’s.
9. The shearing is now ready to happen and so after all that strenuous work everyone sits down for a well deserved cup of tea.
Note: NEVER get between a shearer and tea, this would result in some pretty dire consequences for both parties involved.
10a. The shearers begin their work with wool flying, machines rattling, sheep baaing, dogs barking, farmers yelling... ahhh the serenity.
10b. At the same time the wool rollers consisting of either old men or farmers wives (and Sharon) start the most thrilling job in all the world. I would recommend anyone leave their own well paid job just to do because of the sheer joy one gets from a hard days work and little pay… Ok so I don’t really enjoy this job so much. However it is made bearable by the fact that the other workers are usually very good to chat to, even if coming from NZ one finds it very hard to understand what exactly they are telling you due to a rather thick accent. But if you nod and smile (especially if you are a young girl and they are old men) and feign understanding they may slip you 20quid for the pleasure of your company ;).
11. Stop for a cup of tea.
Note: Shearers never just have one cup, only allowing one cup would be an insult.
12. Shearing and wool rolling.
13. Stop for a cup of tea and lunch.
14. Shearing and wool rolling.
15. Stop for a cup of tea.
16. Last session of searing and wool rolling.
Note: If shearers hit the 99 sheep mark at the end of shearing they must be the one to buy drinks at the pub afterwards. So the cunning old hands keep an eye out and try to play the whole last session so some poor shearer must spend all his hard earned cash on the others!
17. End of shearing and the farmer brings out beers and local cider, both of which are consumed whilst talking about all and nothing for a long period of time.
18. The whole set up must now be packed down, but can be done whilst polishing off another beer.
19. The farmer pays the troop, if you have a good farmer, if not then the next few months the main shearer must try to almost trick he farmer into paying.
Note: In this part of the world they say that the second type of farmer is typical of a Scotsman (I will leave you to be the judge as I have never worked for a Scotsman).
20. This could go one of two ways the first being the main shearer decides to head on to shear another farm.
Note: When considering this they don’t seem to account for time (one night we started shearing a second lot at 7pm!).
The second being that the shearers decide to head home and ‘accidentally’ pull into a pub on the way home deciding to forget the fact they have a wife and children at home. A few beers and a lot of chatting later one finally heads home.
21. Eat the dinner left in the oven (if your lucky) as by now it is around 10pm.
22. Have a shower.
23. Fall to sleep watching sport (or some other ‘manly’ thing) on the television.
24. Last cup of tea for the day.
25. Head to bed.
26. Begin the process all over again.

Last days in Denmark - sorry its late, have been working arses off in UK.

The wee bathroom in Heidi's apartment (Sharon for scale) :-) cosy



We are currently sitting on a bus travelling through the English country side to our next destination, Ross-on-Wye. We enjoyed Denmark and are a bit sad to leave but feel ready for our next adventure.

We have been a bit slack with our blogging but have been busy since our last. We forked out some money and went on a canal tour, which is good for the fact that you know what they are telling you is true… Our dear friend and guide Heidi at times proved to change Denmark’s history but we forgave her for that as she truly believed the stories herself!
We visited the National museum and walked through Danish history from the Stone Age through to the year 2000. It was amazing to see how many relics the Danish have especially form the Viking times…all thanks to sacrifices to their God in bogs around Denmark! We also visited their art museum which took us two days to navigate as it was so huge and we both found very enjoyable.
The sight’s that Andy and I both enjoyed the most were to be found down the main street of the town on the weekend. This street is huge and only for pedestrians and so buskers with all types of talents gather to entertain shoppers. Buskers included Indian music, bag pipes, boy’s playing bottles, soccer skills, portrait sketches, singers, dancers, spray painters and many others in between. One of our favourite things we stumbled across was a ‘sign spotters’ display which consisted of funny signs from all around the world. That street could entertain one for hours.

On the Saturday night we decided to ‘hit the town’ and were lucky enough to find some friendly Nepalese people at the local bus stop who invited us to join them in going to the pub they frequent due to the great live music and for the one who decides a pretty singer he quite fancies. They proceeded to dance with great vigour stating that ‘western’ dancing was too boring and slow… so we joined in, fun, fun  True to the Nepalese tradition of dancing, friends and food, they brought with them large amounts of Asian food in boxes and where not at all perturbed by the fact they had forgotten forks… It was the first time we had really felt ‘at home’ in Denmark and would now love to visit Nepal!

The next day we rested as we did not manage to get home until the wee hours and then headed to an English speaking church situated in ‘the hood’ and enjoyed that very much. While we were at church the weather packed it in much to our disappointment as we had planned a bbq at the beach with the two girls we were staying with and their friends. Luckily we made good of a bad thing and still went along with the bbq even though most Danes piked out… to be honest some of them need a bit of toughening up! So we sat out in the rain and cooked the bbq (which took awhile as they seem to all only have tiny coal grills) and when it was done we ate the (coal flavoured) food on the floor of the apartment on rugs and chatted until quite late once again, very hugilite (translation: atmospherically pleasant, cosy and homely)!
Our last day in Copenhagen consisted of a trip into the greater Copenhagen area where we had been invited to visit a homeless shelter that Heidi had worked in four years ago. The staff were wonderful and we learned about their services and ate lunch with the homeless people, some of them being quite characters and at one point one of them rushing in to be looked after with blood pouring out of his hand… they say no day is ever the same in that place!

We then headed off to visit the castle on which Shakespeare based his play Hamlet… oooo… This was the first time we had been prepared to fork out some money to see the inside of a ‘real’ Danish castle however were unfortunately stopped due to the ‘privilege’ of having the Queen visit the castle. So instead of seeing the castle we got to see the Queen for a few precious seconds… wow… Luckily the old case mates below the castle and the chapel where still able to be looked at as the Queen was not going to grace those areas with her presence! We blindly (due to the fact we had no torch and did not want to buy one) searched around the dark, cold, and damp maze below the castle, looked around the chapel and then headed back to town for an ice cream and dinner thanks to Heidi’s lovely mother who sadly we were unable to meet.
And now here you find me…in England travelling on the bus with Andrew asleep beside me… here we go again.




The old streets in Elsinor, the oldest building we saw was built in 1592
Hamlets Castle
The Queen who turned up late and stopped us seeing most of the castle... bless the royals.
The Case mate, dungeon/cellar/cold damp place
The guns pointing to Sweden just a few miles across the water

Fun in the sun!!!

We arrived in Denmark on Thursday morning and since then we have walked, walked and walked some more. This seems to be our common theme, mainly due to the fact walking and looking is free (well mostly anyway)!

The Marble Church started 1750 finished 1894



Bottle buskers, these guys were amazing! (were playing little mermaid when we arrived though)

Copenhagen is a beautiful city (though a little flat) there are lots of really old buildings statues and castles everywhere. Because it is so flat and public transport stupidly expensive everyone has a bike and no one wears helmets. The girls are well dressed and most riding in heels (very interesting to watch). Our host Heidi who stayed with Sharon in Auckland met us off the ferry and cooked us the biggest healthiest brunch ever, mmm it was soo good.
We spent the first 3 days walking around Copenhagen (Kobenhavn). We played street ball (a game like basketball but played on only half a court with 3 players on each team and as far as we could tell little to no rules) with some 'marginalised kids' that Heidi works with and got well and truly walloped, sorry New Zealand we let you down big time! However we do have the excuse that we hadn’t played this game before and I (Andy) was in bare feet on concrete (ouch!!). We walked along canals, around the palace and into the Marble church which was beautiful, down bustling street of shops and buskers and checked out a Brazilian festival which didn’t seem all that Brazilian, just a whole heap of people (including us) enjoying the sun mmmm. We also had a quick glimpse of Christiania which is an old area of Copenhagen that is run by hippy’s left over from the 60s, unfortunately no photos allowed (due to some questionable practices) but very interesting to see as it is just like being transported back in time to that era including barrels of fire to warm yourself and freedom of expression, expressed in all sorts of crazy art forms, music, housing and theatre.Frederiksborg Castle

Saturday evening we hopped on a train heading to north Zealand to someone’s bbq, we arrived really late but had a lot of fun! There were jut a few people there but they were really into singstar which made for quite a few laughs. At one point in the night all the Danish people decided the two Kiwis should sing a Danish song… They found this hilarious and we were to find out later that this song was all about a man who wanted to sleep with lots of different things (a warning to other don’t trust the Danish ha!)
Sunday morning we wandered around a Frederiksborg castle with a huge Baroque style garden.

The Chaple.
A small part of the Baroque stlye garden (Les they may have positions vacant...)


The Danish love building with wonky wood this is farm house from 1700The best tree ever!!!

Daisy girl.

It was Sunday morning and the day of Pentecost so they had a special service in the chapel, the only original part of the castle built in 1560 that survived a fire. The Chapel was stunning and gave a glimpse of what the whole castle would have looked like. The service had a choir and a conductor and the singing was amazing, it was a Lutheran service so very conservative but it was amazing to sit there and listen and gaze, the only thing we could do as we where unable to understand what was going on. After the service I got a few photos before being told off and ushered to the back of the church (darn tourists). We then wandered around the big park around the castle and its amazing gardens that are meticulously cared for. The weather was amazing we are finally getting our European tan on.
That evening we went to stay with Heidi’s grandmother who is the sweetest most generous grandmother ever and who loved having new people to talk to. She fed us up and set us off in the morning on another big walk around the lakes and parks of the area. We visited a Danish graveyard which was done in a different but really beautiful way and we ended up at a museum of historic buildings recovered from different ages around Denmark, you can see in the photos that there was rarely a straight piece of timber used, I think they found it easier to shape the rocks and bricks around the timber, go figure!?!
Heidi’s grandma gave us a bike to use around town and another bed to sleep on in Heidi’s small apartment, she drove us back to Copenhagen giving us a history tour at the same time which at the age of 84 in a manual with no power steering was a nerve racking experience, but we made it back safe none-the-less.
So here you find us on Tuesday having a relaxing day, very tired but full of good experiences!!!

Norway to Denmark

Norway in a nutshell
Musk Ox behind glass

We woke up at 5:30am (not a pleasant hour I might add - Sharon) to catch the bus from Kristiansund to Oppdal from where we would catch the train to Oslo. It was a cold rainy morning and the bus swayed like a boat as it navigated the winding road around a few of Norway’s many fiords making me feel rather queasy. It was a beautiful drive though with steep mountains and cascading waterfalls the whole way. We where most surprised to see that people actually lived in the mountains on the edge of massive cliffs in the freezing cold and where most of the year they only have dark. Beautiful to pass through, yes, good to live in hmmm very questionable?
We arrived in Oppdal where I was more than happy to get off the bus. Waiting at the train station we saw the only musk ox we would see and found a stunning postcard which pretty much summed up Norway in a nut shell, all business in the front and party in the back :-p. One of you lucky readers will be receiving it in the post. The Train took us high into the mountains where there was still a lot of snow. It was a really scenic trip and well recommended. Though if one wants to buy a simple cup of tea you may get abused for being foreign and being hard to please (apparently even though they did have tea one should only buy black coffee)!
With only an hour in Oslo we didn’t have time to look around but it looked like a nice city scattered around the hills. We did have our fist experience of seeing junkies taking hits in the open park though… very odd!
Our ferry sailed overnight to Denmark and as everything was rather pricey so we brought what we like to call a ‘bucket of fun’ (a massive tub of candy) for Heidi, some of which was eaten (for her own good of course) before it got to Denmark. We sailed into a stiff wind (apparently this is uncommon, lucky us!) and soon the boat was creaking, groaning and swaying as it ploughed through the swells, this made sleeping a challenge. But it was nice to wake up in a new country and a fun experience all the same.