Village Bull “Prince” And His Two Girlfriends

One of our survey teams needed to capture some spot levels in a small pasture field in the middle of the village of Kelmscott in Oxfordshire. Occupying the field was the village bull “Prince” and his two girlfriends. Now; most of our surveyors are familiar with being around and handling farm animals – but this fella looked like trouble! To minimise the risk of entertaining the villagers to a bull fight in the pasture arena, the bull’s owner kindly agreed to accompany the surveyor’s during the survey. As the farmer said, “he’ll probably run a mile as soon as we get close” – and sure enough he did. But you never know what mood animals are in from day to day, we always assume they are unpredictable and take the necessary precautions – well wouldn’t you!

An interesting fact was discovered on a river surveyed recently in Nottinghamshire. Whilst surveying rivers, our surveyors always note the bed material and bank materials; this information is used to gauge how quickly water can flow over them. On this particular river through the village, the bed material was mostly gravel with the odd bit of silt here and there. Then there was a definitive point about 1km upstream of the village where the bed of the river suddenly changed to a beautifully flat and apparently polished stone material. Why the sudden change? During a short interview with one of the elderly farmers in the village, it was revealed that when he was a boy, a horse used to pull a cart up the river bed and men would cut the stone out of the river bed and put it on the cart and take it back to the village to use as flooring in the cottages. They must have got to the bridge (pictured) and couldn’t get the horse and cart through, because this is where the rock bed now remains intact!