Derbyshire’s landscape is hauntingly beautiful, says Stuart Reid, so long as you can make your peace with the sheep
Sheep are ugly, dirty, stupid and cowardly, but by far the nastiest thing about them is that in the countryside they are given precedence over dogs. Take your dog for a romp in the Peak District, for example, or on the North York Moors, and he will tear about like a mad thing, tongue out, eyes wild with excitement, his whole being alive with unconditional gratitude. Then you see a notice saying that dogs are to be kept on a lead, and the bottom falls out of your world and you feel angry and aggrieved. If you are fortunate enough to be a cockney, you will reflect bitterly that you can allow a dog off the lead just about anywhere in London, including the Brompton Oratory, but that here in the heart of England, surrounded by miles and miles of heather and scrub, of rock and rabbit holes — and, OK, the occasional sheep — you have to put poor Fido on a leash. What’s the point of the English countryside?
Sometimes the bossy-boots attitude to dogs extends to towns and villages. When we were in Hutton-le-Hole, on the edge of the North York Moors, last year, sheep wandered at will through the village, and dogs were supposed to be kept on a lead. But why? To attract tourists, I suppose. Sheep on the village green are no doubt considered ‘authentic’. This is the way things must have been in the Middle Ages, tourists will say, and snap the scene with their mobile telephones.
Still, rules are rules. So what’s the drill? What’s the bottom line? When my wife, Mary, and I were in the Peak District National Park in April, on our first visit, I asked a park ranger whether dog walkers were really and truly supposed to keep their dogs on leads.
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