Our love of Alpacas started when we visited my parents who live on the edge of Delamere Forest in Cheshire. Their home overlooks a valley and one of the fields had Alpacas on it. Sitting on their balcony with a glass of wine I became enchanted by these beautiful creatures. So around 2018 the husband bashing began and one evening at my parents he agreed that getting 3 alpacas was ok. From that moment I scoured the internet to find my Alpacas and was swiftly disheartened to realise that it was not going to be a thrifty affair.

Then one day the stars aligned and a starter herd of 3 females plus hurdles, feeding bowls, halters and feed became available for a quick sale - £1500 for the lot. I had a gut feeling that this was the moment to take the plunge. Christmas was imminent and after much fluttering eyelashes and promises that I would do all the work we had an agreement that I could go for it.

The deal was done and on the 23^rd December 2020 (in lockdown) off we trotted to pick up the girls. We hired a horse box and headed to Hertfordshire. How ill prepared we were!!!!

After a 4 hour journey we arrived an a mansion house, the owners had moved to the Caribbean to ride out the covid storm and wanted the girls rehomed asap and left them in the care of the groundsman until this happened.

In my head we would arrive walk the lovely girls into the horse box, head home and I t would be happily ever after. How wrong can you be!!!!

It was winter the ground was wet, we pulled up in said horse box to be ushered to a very big field. “It’s ok” he said, “I have carrots”. We went along with this and the girls came and hand fed and we thought it was wonderful until they tired of us and carrots and ran off. “What do we do now, to get them in the horse box” I said…

None of us had a clue, we chased them and we tried to coax them as the ever fading light surrounded us. Nick was now having a sense of humour failure and said we will have to come back another time, it was getting dark and 2 days before Christmas.

Eventually we mastered the art of cornering them and using the hurdles to block them and a lot of man handling (in a nice way) and much spitting we got them in the horse box. The journey home was very quiet – shell shocked!!!

Another 4 hours later we got home and unloaded them into the paddock in the dark and Chapel Ground Alpacas was born.