Alpaca Walking

July 05, 2018

Alpaca Walking

If you know me personally or have followed my blog for a little while you know how much I love alpacas and how I'm slightly obsessed. Slightly is probably an understatement, I'm ridiculously obsessed with them. So what else would I do on my 21st other than walk alpacas? My boyfriend booked us to walk two! I cried when he told me I'm literally that obsessed. The company we walked them with is a company I have followed on twitter since college so it's been years. The company is called Alpacaly Ever After and they are based in the lake district.

Before I get to all the pictures and what happened on the day I thought I'd tell you a little about the company. The company is owned by an award winning lady called Emma who writes children's books and makes amazing crafts and Terry who was once a soldier in the British army. They rehome a lot of alpacas who are no longer wanted. When I went they had around 60 alpacas, a lot were adopted and rehomed with them and some were cria which had been bread from their herd (a cria is a baby alpaca). Fun fact, after we walked the alpacas we went over to where the ladies are kept and we got to see a cria which was hours old! The alpaca walks are held on the grounds of the Lingholm Estate which lays on the shores of Derwent Water.

So, lets get down to the walk itself. Our walk started at 9:15am which sounds super early but I'd been up since like 6am because I was so excited, I let matt direct us who took us to a statue of peter rabbit because he thought it was a squirrel. That might sounds super random but you meet your guide at a big red squirrel which we found eventually but we did have to ring out guide Ruby for a little bit of help. Ruby was the most amazing guide ever she made the experience even better. She was so lovely and offered to carry my camera for me and took some amazing photos for me. I even cried at one point because the alpaca I was walking used me as a scratching post and it was adorable and she just snapped away and got the cutest photo of it. She told us so many facts, the majority I knew because I constantly read alpaca facts in my spare time but she taught Matt some super cool facts and I got to learn some more, which I didn't think was possible because I know some really random facts about alpacas. I have two favourite alpacas from the company which are Big Will and Milky Joe, I was lucky enough to walk Big Will. He's such a big alpaca but he was so well behaved and took to me really well. Matt got to walk Priest who was really sassy and is Big Will's best friend he made a lot of noise when he was in the pen, I think he was trying to make the other alpacas jealous. After the walk Ruby let me go and meet Milky Joe and he was even more adorable in person! Milky Joe is the ginger alpaca in the pictures, Priest is the brown alpaca who has a little white patch on his neck which looks like a priests collar hence the name and Big Will is the big white alpaca on the pictures from the walk. The grounds we walked the alpacas on were stunning but the best part was definitely by the lake. I literally ran straight in the lake with Big Will and ended up spending the day in soggy shoes but it was definitely worth it. Both alpacas decided it was a good time to poo and wee while we were in the lake which was not my highlight of the walk. I love that alpacas like running into the lake and love the water it's not something you'd really expect but it was really fun.

If you love animals or just love going on a nice walk I'd highly recommend the alpaca walk, Matt is the least animal loving person I've ever met and he loved it, I don't think it's possible to hate it tbh. Compared to other companies that walk alpacas and just other places that have alpacas I've never seen such happy well looked after alpacas. It's clear they are loved and that they are extremely happy living at Alpacely Ever After, so if you're ever in the lakes and want something fun and exciting to do make sure you book a walk!!