A glorious sunny day at Winster on the edge of Windermere with panoramic views made for an excellent day. We are very grateful to the landowner Mr Brian Scowcroft for allowing us to use the superb land and to the four judges: Polly Dunckley, Steve Hore, Brenda Lawson and Paul Holmes. Winster is a superb location with undulating rough terrain, wetter rush land and a lake which all pose challenging for the dogs in different ways.

Gail McNab’s pup, Grovery Fallon excelled losing just 4 points over the four tests putting her 5 points beyond her nearest rival Neil Hardy with Risefit Black Adder of Marranscar, Gail McNab was presented with the Ashrigg Shield. The novice was well competed with the top seven dogs within 8 points of each other Neil Hardy’s Marranscar Viper came out on top with John Lawson’s Lovely Lily Lavendar taking 2nd place.

The open test was a pleasure to watch on challenging ground with four well thought out tests, it was always going to be interesting to see who came out on top. A narrow angle across a corner of the lake caused problems for many, Lowforge Aragon of Leacaz (L.Hartis) and Waterford Featherman (N.Rudgard) were the highest scorers on the water both getting 17 out of 20. Nicola Rudgard and Waterford Featherman continued to show their quality with superb straight lines on their three other retrieves leaving them top of the field winning the Greystoke Castle Trophy.

We are also very grateful to our sponsor Skinners and Westmorland Veterinary Group for their kind donations. Keith Sykes also agreed to come along and take photographs throughout the day, he has generously not charged us for this service, for which we are very grateful to him. Keith is also an excellent artist mainly doing animal portraits you can see his work at www.kjsykes.com. As you will realise it is very difficult to ensure every dog is photographed on a safari test so there will not be pictures of every dog. If anyone would like a copy of the pictures please email kranson@hotmail.co.uk. Kirsty will burn them onto DVD & post them at a cost £3/disk (to cover the costs of dvds and postage any profits will go pack to Burns and Becks Gundog Club).