LUXURIATING in Sunday’s sunshine on a Coombe Bissett hilltop, I was transported to a previous life, 200 miles and 30 years away.

Sheepdogs were the common factor that took me back.

We’d stopped off for a couple of hours to watch the charity trials run by sheep farmers Rob and Anna Hawke.

Now in their tenth year, they attract competitors from as far afield as Cornwall, Lancashire and Wales, vying for points to qualify for the nationals.

This year’s entrants included Dick Roper, seen on Countryfile just a week or so ago winning One Man and His Dog.

As young marrieds we spent four years in the Peak District, first in a rented cottage under the shadow of the spectacular Stanage Edge, later buying and renovating an equally isolated but sadly dilapidated cottage a mile from the wonderfully named village of Sparrowpit.

For the first six months of the project the two of us, and our border collie, lived in a caravan in the garden.

I used to go to all the local sheepdog trials, filled with admiration for those amazingly clever animals and enjoying the efforts of their owners, a succession of eccentric hill farmers, to get the better of some surprisingly stroppy sheep.

Our own collie, I ought to say, was not of the working or even particularly obedient variety, but a rescued stray.

He was a quirky animal, loving and protective towards the family but downright unfriendly to passers-by, regarding bicycle wheels and walking sticks as twin threats to the security of the universe.

Those were the days of creeping home across the icy Snake Pass in a tinny little Renault 4 at 2am after a night shift in Manchester.

Of snowploughs digging us out, and 5ft high mounds of the white stuff towering on either side of our narrow lane, where the only way out was uphill.

Of abandoning the car a mile from home and staggering, five months pregnant, through horizontal blizzards in the dark, every so often dropping thigh-deep into hidden dips in the fields whilst trying to spot the distant porch light.

Everyday life was an adventure.

I hesitate to tempt fate, but nowadays ours is a much tamer affair, down here in the softie South, where the temperature at 4 o’clock on this October afternoon registered 28 degrees, according to my car.

Still, how much nicer to be warm and still be able to enjoy the low-key charm of an event such as this, where onlookers chatted to whoever happened to be standing next to them while patient parents tried to explain the rules to puzzled children, and Poppy the lurcher looked on in fascination as dogs were not just allowed, but actively encouraged to run away from their owners and chase things.

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