We're going on an alpaca walking experience

Cathy Darcey & Stuart Woolley share their journey with alpacas – and other animals – to make a business out of something they love doing

- Cathy Darcey & Stuart Woolley

We met in 2013 while working at an agricultural college in Surrey. Stuart was managing the estate and Cathy was the Director of Estates. We loved animals and both had ambitions to be somewhere we could have our own animals. Stuart had worked many farms and been brought up in farming so for him it was natural, Cathy on the other hand was a townie with nail extensions who found the thought of being miles from anywhere exciting and terrifying at the same time. After weekends travelling through North Devon in our caravan we fell in love with the place and thought it might be a place that would suit us.

ALPACAS ON GUARD

We wanted some alpacas because we’d heard they might protect our little flock of sheep. Cathy had been on an alpaca walking experience and had said to Stuart ‘we could do this for a living?’ Stuart said, ‘Don’t be stupid’, (or words to that effect!) After soul-searching about whether it was the ‘right time?’ for us, and house hunting for what seemed like a lifetime, we found a place and undertook the first move in May 2016. It was a beautiful Devon longhouse with a couple of acres and a stream running through the garden and we developed a business using Stuart’s surname ‘Woolley’. 

For a little while it was enough to keep a few chickens, a dozen pet sheep and three dogs and it was the intention to rear our own lambs and sell small scale and for a short time we did just that. We didn’t intend for it to be the start of a journey that would take us much further.