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About us…

Our Mission

  • To provide the alpacas and llamas in our care with the best possible lives and the utmost care.
  • To offer a welcoming new home for life, for unwanted alpacas and llamas from all over the UK.
  • To provide people with hugely enjoyable and unique alpaca experiences that are accessible to all.
  • To immerse our guests in the beauty of the Lake District World Heritage Site and to introduce the mental and physical benefits of time spent in nature and outdoor activities to a new generation of diverse visitors.
  • To share our knowledge about a fascinating species.
  • To be an innovative and environmentally conscious enterprise.
  • To design and make delightful, ethical and sustainable products that promote
    alpacas and their yarn.

The Benefits

Alpacas and llamas are wonderful animals to spend time with. They work particularly well with children and vulnerable
adults due to their calm, curious nature, individual and humorous personalities and of course their appealing appearance!
Spending time with them:

  • Reduces stress and provides a respite from day-to-day ongoing concerns.
  • Improves empathy as we learn to understand the needs of another being.
  • Improves impulse control by highlighting the need to be aware of our behaviour, it’s affects, and how to adapt ourselves accordingly.
  • Builds trust and confidence – camelids respond to calm, confident interaction with humans and to see this affect in action helps foster self-esteem.
  • Reconnects humans with nature in an accessible way, that attracts groups who would not otherwise be attracted to outdoor activities.
  • Promotes physical exercise among groups that would not ordinarily be enthusiastic about it, and acts as a catalyst for positive change.
  • Facilitates walking as therapy, allowing conversations to flow that can be difficult in more formal settings.

We have set up our independent social enterprise, to make best use of our skills, and do something positive and innovative with the land where we live, bringing visitors in touch with the landscape and natural world in an enjoyable, engaging and therapeutic way. We aim to make the experiences accessible to all, adapting our approach as necessary, providing everyone with an inspiring and memorable experience!

We are proud to be the Number One activity according to Trip Advisor in the whole of Cumbria and the North West!

Meet our Team

Directors

Meet Terry

Terry & One-Eyed Willie

Emma & a cup of tea

Meet Ruby

Ruby & Moose

John represented by a drawing he did of Bill Murray

  • Terry was a soldier and marksman in the British Army from the age of sixteen, including time spent with the Intelligence Department and in three war zones. He then worked for ten years in the security sector, thus acquiring the ability to be unfazed by any situation ever. He has more Big Ideas per day than is healthy for one man. Terry is also a member of the guide team and leads llama treks and is responsible for the welfare of The Woolly Army.

 

  • Emma is a writer of extraordinarily interesting children’s books, maker of beautifully whimsical things and owner of award-winning design-led business ‘temporary measure’. She brings to Alpacaly the management and creative skills acquired over her eighteen years as an entrepreneur and is responsible for social impact, story telling, marketing, social media content, design, branding, artwork and Big Decisions. She is also responsible for Terry.

 

  • Ruby is our incredibly practical and capable team manager. She comes from a Cumbrian farming and equestrian background and has a great deal of experience in animal management and handling. She is responsible for guide team and organising the overall planning of activities and logistics. She is our resident human welfare practitioner and is also head of animal welfare alongside Terry. She is the most capable twenty four year old on the planet.

 

  • John brings his years of customer service expertise to the team to provide our visitors with a seamless booking experience, as well as using his technical and design skills as a self-employed graphic designer to facilitate our website, marketing development, along with branding, artwork and product design. He is head of IT, is a Genius Musician and is too wiley to have been caught on camera for the last ten years, so is represented here by a drawing he did of Bill Murray.

Meet our Team

The Guides

Odin & Ellie & Scooter

Meet Nicole

Nicole & Jebs

Aimee & Olive

Lin & Gremlin

Jade & Mikey

Meet Tom

Tom & Rosie

Meet Shelley

Shelley & Obama

  • Shelley has a solid background in the outdoor industry and has stopped noticing any kind of weather short of a hurricane. She is one of our Mountain Leaders and can navigate her way around the fells blindfolded. She is wonderful at rehabilitating new members of the herd and her favourite aspect of the job is seeing the improvement in health and confidence in animals from when they first arrive.

 

  • One of our two amazing Team Coordinators, Ellie used to be all about the equines, until we brain washed her with alpacas and llamas and made her join our cult *evil laugh*. Her ability to be unfased by any kind, or size of animal despite being the tiniest member of the team has come in extremely handy – she is an absolute natural! Animal welfare is her passion, and we are so delighted to have her on board with her amazing experience to care for The Woolly Army.

 

  •  Team Co-ordinating alongside Ellie is our awsome Nicole, who has her own fitness and personal training business which she runs around her guiding days. She brings her amazing customer management skills, her physio skills and more enthusiasm and energy than one person should really be allowed. She competes in horse riding competitions in her spare time because she doesn’t really believe in the concept of spare time.

 

  • Sam won us over by promising on his job application to only wear the staff uniform if it brought out his eyes. He managed to fit an extremely diverse collection of jobs in before we stole him; from selling cars to working with children in residential care. He is also a member of our office team when we let him have a spare day because he likes to use a calculator. He is a paraglider in his free time but we try not to hold that against him.

 

  • Lin…where to start with Lin…Roller skating waitress? English Language Teacher in Frankfurt? Children’s Entertainer of such skill that she became a trainer of other children entertainers? And then somewhere inbetween running a Women’s Refuge and being an Independant Parental Supporter for people with children with special educational needs. We count the lucky stars that brought us Lin, who first came to us as a volunteer and gave her time so kindly and enthusiastically that we couldn’t really let her escape. Sorry Lin, too late now.

 

  • Tom came to us through the government Kickstarter campaign for young people and we refuse to let him leave. He has learnt more about cameras and lenses and filters since he arrived than we thought there was to learn, and he actually enjoys it. He has pins in his wrist from a skateboard accident that makes handling a gimbal a challenge but that doesn’t stop our intrepid videographer from documenting all things Woolly Army.

 

  • Jade’s love of working with animals lead her to Alpacaly’s gate after several years working like a champ in the veterinary industry. She started making friends with our Lyzzic hall herd before she even joined us and although they seemed a bit aloof to start, in her words she was “in it for the long game!” In her spare time she is a fitness queen (being a qualified personal trainer) and has grand plans of opening a high class hedgehog hotel.

 

  • Aimee was working in a gallery when we lured her in, as a qualified outdoor activity instructor she missed being relentlessly exposed to the weather so it was an easy task to get her onboard. She first starting hanging out with large animals when she rode horses from the age of five, and she likes to pursuade farmers to let her help with lambing and all kinds of messy sheep shenanigans when she isn’t up to her ears in alpacas and llamas. She has swam for her county and she is a rugby champ, so we wouldn’t mess with her really.

Once upon a time in The Land Of The Lakes...

Emma (writer, illustrator, and maker of beautifully whimsical things) found herself accidentally nodding her head when Terry (former soldier in the British Army, ne’er do well, and thinker of Big Ideas) informed her that having moved from inner city Manchester to The Lake District the only sensible thing for them to do in their spare time, was to start taking care of Peruvian livestock. Everyone told them it was a terrible idea… they gave each other a wink and went off and did it anyway.

The two entrepreneurs are fast learners and dedicated grafters, and they now have a herd of over one hundred and sixty delightfully funny-looking re-homed and rescued alpacas and llamas, all supported by a hugely successful Social Enterprise. They chose the social enterprise model, specifically a Community Interest Company, because they firmly believe that it is the most forward thinking and sustainable approach to doing useful work in the world. It is a model that makes best use of their entrepreneurial skills and enables them to do something positive and innovative with the land where they live.

If there is one thing this pair are good at, it is recruiting People of Exceptional Skill to their cause, and over the last four years they have collected an amazing team of misfits with such a broad and dynamic set of abilities, that everything from graphic design, product development and manufacture, to alpaca shearing, environmental surveys and veterinary procedures are all done in house.

We have found the most beautiful homes for the Alpacaly Ever After herd and are lucky enough to work with some of the most amazing businesses in The Lake District. We are proud to be rated at Tripadvisors No.1 activity to do in the Lake District winning the Travellers Choice Award and getting the Best of Britain Activities title in 2020 which saw in such illustrious company as Buckingham Palace and Covent garden! All of the animals that come into our care have a home for life and the dedicated care of our team of seven full time guides and four directors.
The income generated from welcoming visitors, from all over the world. allows us to fulfil our social aims. It has helped us provide experiences for a huge variety of third sector organisations, including, amongst others: Launchpad Veterans Services, Young Adults Respite Services, Cumbria County Councils Foster Care Services, Eden Valley Hospice, Friends of Chernobyl’s Children, Cumbria Headway, and the One In A Million Foundation.

Where Next?

So, not bad for a start, but we have grander plans ahead, in fact, we may just not stop until world domination is in our sights! All the alpaca shenanigans on our social media have lead to lots of wonderful opportunities and the Woolly Army have been featured on Salvage Hunters, ITV and BBC news, the Telegraph and i newspapers, Diply, Love Travel and we were delighted to take the Unilad team up to the top of Catbells in what we believe was the first ever alpaca walk up a Lakeland fell and the resulting awesome video received over five million views (which we thought was a lot until we made a video featuring alpacas and rainbows and it broke the internet with over 35 million views and counting!) We then teamed up with Unilad along with Virgin Trains to make a video promoting rail travel to The Lake District.

And where will the story go next? Well who can say, all we know for sure is that it has been an absolute privilege to spend time in such gentle, curious and extremely funny-looking company, and that we will be trying our hardest, every day, to make sure that our woolly army get their Alpacaly Ever After…

As seen in...

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