Shepherdess Emma Gray has revealed how police were called to her home after a viewer of This Farming Life complained about her husband riding their quad bike with their two-year-old son on his lap.
The mother-of-one, 35, recently relocated from her National Trust farm Fallowlees in Northumberland to the Isle of Bute with her husband Ewan and two-year-old son Len, who both feature in the BBC2 series.
During a recent episode, Ewan was seeing driving a quad bike slowly across the family’s lambing fields with their son Len, who was wearing a helmet, sitting on his lap.
Posting on Instagram earlier this week, Emma revealed she’d been left horrified when a viewer had complained to Argyll and West Dunbartonshire police about the action.
And speaking to FEMAIL, Emma said she was ‘disappointed’ to be targeted, saying: ‘It was in the midst of Covid, we had just moved to new island, we have no family nearby, nor any childcare.
Shepherdess Emma Gray has revealed police were called to her home after a viewer of This Farming Life complained that her husband was riding their quad bike with their two-year-old son on his lap. Pictured, Len with father Ewan on the BBC2 series
Emma, 35, (pictured) recently relocated from her National Trust farm Fallowlees in Northumberland to the Isle of Bute with her husband Ewan and son Len
‘Taking Len slowly round on the bike with his dad with a helmet on to check the welfare of lambing ewes didn’t strike us to be breaking the law.’
The footage the viewer complained about showed Emma’s young son happily perching on his dad’s lap as they rode through the family’s land – four weeks after they had moved there.
The duo were checking that lambs were marked up with the right mother, but Ewan was sure to take his son home before having to get off the quad bike.
Posting on Instagram after the programme aired, the mother-of-one wrote: ‘So nice to have a visit from the police.
The mother-of-one took to Instagram to share her frustration at the viewer, adding it made her feel ‘horrible’ and shared footage of the moment the anonymous viewer complained about
‘Someone kindly made a complaint about us having Len with us on the quad during the show. Makes you feel a bit horrible inside’.
There is no minimum age to ride quad bikes on private land and you do not need a driving licence to ride a quad bike off-road.
Quad bikes may carry passengers if they are designed to do so.
While it is recommended, quad bike drivers and passengers in England, Scotland and Wales are not required by law to wear crash helmets.
The footage the viewer complained about shows Emma’s young son happily perching on his dad’s lap as they rode through the family’s land – four weeks after they had moved there
The duo were checking that lambs were marked up with the right mother, but Ewan was sure to take his son home before having to get off the quad bike
Argyll and West Dunbartonshire police has been contacted for comment.
Emma hit the headlines 12 years ago, aged 23, when a split from her fiancé prompted her to take sole tenancy of the National Trust’s 150-acre Fallowlees Farm in Northumberland, making her Britain’s youngest solo shepherdess.
She later became the first woman to win the prestigious Northumberland Sheepdog Trials League in the contest’s four-decade history.
But rural life wasn’t easy – she struggled to find a husband and penned a memoir of her lonely life on the farm in 2012, called One Girl and Her Dog.
Emma longed to find a match, but her search for love suffered a major setback when she broke her back in a near fatal quad bike accident in June 2016.
The shepherdess even appeared in The Sun that same year, revealing that she was looking for love in a photoshoot which encouraged potential suitors to contact her.
Shepherdess Emma tied the knot with Ewan in 2018 and gave birth to their first son Len in 2019. They are pictured on Emma’s National Trust farm Fallowlees in Northumberland
At the time she described her perfect date as a ‘tall, rugged dog-lover who doesn’t mind a bit of muck’.
Not only did Emma become the first solo shepherdess and sheepdog trial champion, she has since broken a world record, and made one of her border collie’s canine royalty – after selling her for a world record £18,900 at auction.
She made 14,000 guineas, an old currency still traditionally used in some livestock bidding, after selling sheepdog Megan to USA buyer Dr Pamela Helton.
While similar farm dogs usually sell for around £2,000, the two-and-a-half-year-old fetched the huge sum because she comes from a family of champions.
Emma also set the previous record of £14,700 for sheepdog bitch Brenna in 2019.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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